Poems (Piatt)/Volume 1/The Black Princess
THE BLACK PRINCESS.A TRUE FABLE OF MY OLD KENTUCKY NURSE.
I knew a Princess: she was old, Crisp-haired, flat-featured, with a lookSuch as no dainty pen of gold Would write of in a Fairy Book.
So bent she almost crouched, her face Was like the Sphinx's face, to me,Touched with vast patience, desert grace, And lonesome, brooding mystery.
What wonder that a faith so strong As hers, so sorrowful, so still,Should watch in bitter sands so long, Obedient to a burdening will!
This Princess was a Slave—like one I read of in a painted tale;Yet free enough to see the sun, And all the flowers, without a veil.
Not of the Lamp, not of the Ring, The helpless, powerful Slave was she,But of a subtler, fiercer Thing: She was the Slave of Slavery.
Court-lace nor jewels had she seen: She wore a precious smile, so rareThat at her side the whitest queen Were dark—her darkness was so fair.
Nothing of loveliest loveliness This strange, sad Princess seemed to lack;Majestic with her calm distress She was, and beautiful though black:
Black, but enchanted black, and shut In some vague Giant's tower of air,Built higher than her hope was. But The True Knight came and found her there.
The Knight of the Pale Horse, he laid His shadowy lance against the spellThat hid her Self: as if afraid, The cruel blackness shrank and fell.
Then, lifting slow her pleasant sleep, He took her with him through the night,And swam a River cold and deep, And vanished up an awful Height.
And, in her Father's House beyond, They gave her beauty robe and crown:———On me, I think, far, faint, and fond, Her eyes to-day look, yearning, down.