“I marvel that, with such a distaste for song-craft,” I said, “that you should bid me read you a chant-royal, a form so much longer than the aubade----”
“O that is different! It is not made use of to wake beautiful ladies from their sleep at unreasonable hours, but reminds one of dreamy old orchards in summer afternoons, and the drowsy bees and the flitting butterflies, and the sea a flickering riband of blue in the distance. It is like the murmur of a beautiful voice talking low to a beautiful lady in the still summer afternoon. The sound of the voice is soothing, and one pays no heed to the words. Besides,” she ended, laughing, “I like the poet, and that makes a great difference----”
At this I bent low and kissed her hand, and without further parley began to read:
O mighty Queen, our Lady of the fire, The light, the music, and the honey, all Blent in one power, one passionate desire Man calleth Love--‘Sweet Love,’ the blessed call-- I come a sad-eyed suppliant to thy knee, If thou hast pity, pity grant to me; If thou hast bounty, here a heart I bring For all that bounty thirst and hungering; O Lady, save thy grace, there is no way For me, I know, but lonely sorrowing-- Send me a maiden meet for love, I pray!
I lay in darkness, face down in the mire, And prayed that darkness might become my pall; The rabble rout roared round me like some quire Of filthy animals primordial; My heart seemed like a toad eternally Prisoned in stone, ugly and sad as he; Sweet sunlight seemed a dream, a mythic thing, And life some beldam’s dotard gossiping: Then Lady, I bethought me of thy sway, And hoped again, rose up this prayer to wing-- Send me a maiden meet for love, I pray!
Lady, I bear no high resounding lyre To hymn thy glory, and thy foes appal With thunderous splendour of my rhythmic ire; A little lute I lightly touch, and small My skill thereon: yet, Lady, if it be I ever woke ear-winning melody, Twas for thy praise I sought the throbbing string, Thy praise alone--for all my worshipping Is at thy shrine, thou knowest, day by day; Then shall it be in vain my plaint to sing? Send me a maiden meet for love, I pray!
Yea! Why of all men should this sorrow dire Unto thy servant bitterly befall? For, Lady, thou dost know I ne’er did tire Of thy sweet sacraments and ritual; In morning meadows I have knelt to thee, In noontide woodlands hearkened hushedly Thy heart’s warm beat in sacred slumbering, And in the spaces of the night heart ring Thy voice in answer to the spheral lay: Nowneath thy throne my suppliant life I fling-- Send me a maiden meet for love, I pray!