This would I answer, if it pleaseth thee,
Thou Rose and Nightingale so strangely one:
That of my palaces, gold one by one,
I fell a-thinking, pondering which to-day,
The day of the Blessed Saint, Saint Valentine,
Which of those many palaces of mine,
I, with bowed head and lowly bended knee,
Might bring to thee.
O which of all my lordly roofs that rise
To kiss the starry skies
May with great beams make safe that golden head,
With all that treasure of hair showered and spread.
Careless as though it were not gold at all--
Yet in the midnight lighting the black hall;
And all that whiteness lying there as though
It were but driven snow.
Pondering on all these pinnacles and towers,
That, as I come with trumpets, call me lord,
And crown their battlements with girlhood flowers,
I can but think of one. 'Twas not my sword
That won it, nor was it aught I did or dreamed,
But O it is a palace worthy thee!
For all about it flows the eternal sea,
A blue moat guarding an immortal queen;
And over it an everlasting crown
That, as the moon comes and the sun goes down,
Adds jewel after jewel, gem on gem,
To the august appropriate diadem
Of her, in whom all potencies that are
Wield sceptres and with quiet hands control,