Poems (Scudder)/The Forest of Compiègne
THE FOREST OF COMPIÈGNE
I
Through the forest of old Compiègne we rode When all the ground was a shimmer of white, A glare, a dazzle, for it had snowed The whole of the long November night. Yet, the leaves were a flicker of palest gold On a sky of such faint and limpid blue As an aqua-marine unflawed might hold With a hint of the sea's green dullness too, —And I thought of Radegonde, Queen of Clotaire, With the gold of her pale Thuringian hair Bound smoothly over her forehead's snow, In silk and vair and in ermine clad, With her cold blue eyes of a saint that had No gleam of sorrow or wrath to show.
II
We rode through the forest of old Compiègne At Christmas tide when the bare boles stood Like jasper columns of richest grain; And all the leaves of the ancient wood Lay piled in sumptuous drifts between, Crimson and purple and deep wine-red Brocades and damasks of rarest sheen Fit to drape over a princeling's bed. —I thought how on many a sunlit morn With plume and banner and shrilling horn, When those noble trees were less gnarled and tall Gay cavalcades had wound past each spot, With Catherine, Francois and Mary the Scot To the winter feasting in Compiègne hall.
III
We rode through the forest of Compiègne old When the warm spring rains were seeping down Through misty leafage, and never a bold Violet peeped through the golden brown Deep clustering mosses; although the brink Of each clamoring stream and each hollow wet With forget-me-nots, turquoise and coral-pink Was in quaint and intricate pattern set. —And I thought of Joan the Blessed Maid, Riding on lissome and unafraid, Though she knew, saint-warned, of her coming fate— Riding on through a sun-flecked way To her capture in that fatal fray In the spring twilight near Compiègne gate.