Love hangs like light about your name As music round the shell: No heart can take of you a tame Farewell. Yet, when your very face was seen, Ill gifts were yours for giving: Love gat strange guerdons of my queen When living. O diamond heart unflawed and clear, The whole world's crowning jewel! Was ever heart so deadly dear So cruel? Yet none for you of all that bled Grudged once one drop that fell: Not one to life reluctant said Farewell. V Strange love they have given you, love disloyal, Who mock with praise your name, To leave a head so rare and royal Too low for praise or blame. You could not love nor hate, they tell us, You had nor sense nor sting: In God's name, then, what plague befell us To fight for such a thing? "Some faults the gods will give," to fetter Man's highest intent: But surely you were something better Than innocent! No maid that strays with steps unwary Through snares unseen, But one to live and die for; Mary, The Queen. VI Forgive them all their praise, who blot Your fame with praise of you: Then love may say, and falter not, Adieu. Yet some you hardly would forgive Who did you much less wrong Once: but resentment should not live Too long. They never saw your lip's bright bow, Your swordbright eyes, The bluest of heavenly things below The skies. Clear eyes that love's self finds most like A swordblade's blue, A swordblade's ever keen to strike, Adieu. VII Though all things breathe or sound of fight That yet make up your spell, To bid you were to bid the light Farewell. Farewell the song says only, being A star whose race is run: Farewell the soul says never, seeing The sun. Yet, wellnigh as with flash of tears, The song must say but so That took your praise up twenty years Ago. More bright than stars or moons that vary, Sun kindling heaven and hell, Here, after all these years, Queen Mary, Farewell. HERSE