With passion eating at his heart He served her beauty, but dared dart No look at her or word impart.-- Taïfi leather's perfumed tan Beneath her, on a low divan She lay 'mid cushions stuffed with down; A slave-girl with an ostrich fan Sat by her in a golden gown. III She bade him sing; fair lutanist She loved his voice: with one white wrist, Hooped with a blaze of amethyst, She raised her ruby-crusted lute: Gold-welted stuff, like some rich fruit, Her raiment, diamond-showered, rolled Folds pigeon-purple, whence one foot Drooped in an anklet-twist of gold. IV He stood and sang with all the fire That boiled within his blood's desire, That made him all her slave yet higher: And, at the end, his passion durst Quench with one burning kiss its thirst.-- O eunuchs! did her face show scorn When through his heart your daggers burst? And dare you say he died forlorn? ROMAUNT OF THE ROSES _A jongleur tells to the Viscountess of Ventadour,--wife of the Seigneur of the Château de Ventadour, in Limousin,--how the troubadour Bernard, her former lover, met his death. Time, the middle of the 12th century._ All the night was drowned in dreaming; And, above the terraced height, Hung the moon, a sinking crescent, In the ocean mirrored white; And a breath of distant music And of fragrance filled the night. Dripped the musk of myriad roses From a million heavy sprays; And the nightingales were sobbing 'Mid the roses, where the haze And the purple mists of midnight Caught the moonlight's rippled rays. And the towers of the palace, 'Mid its belt of ancient trees, On the mountain rose, romantic, White as foam of summer seas; And the murmur of the ocean Made a harp of every breeze. Where the moon shone on the terrace And its fountains' falling foam; Where the marble urns of flowers Spilled their perfume in the gloam; By the alabaster Venus Stood her troubadour come home. Bernard, he who was my master And your lover, Ventadour; There to meet her by commandment, She the lovely Eleanor; She of Normandy the Duchess, He a simple troubadour. And she met him by the statue, By the marble Venus there,-- Like a moonbeam 'mid the roses, Who their crimson hearts laid bare, Breathing out their lives in fragrance, At her naked feet and fair.-- Then she told him she was Queen now, That her husband now was King, King of England; and to-morrow She would sail. And then a ring From her hand she took and gave him; For the last time bade him sing.