Poem to Zenobia

ZENOBIA

A Poem to Zenobia

Zenobia, Queen of Palmyra

Attributed to Miss Ticknor, from Harriet Hosmer: Letters and Memories, edited by Cornelia Carr (New York: Moffat, Yard & Co., 1912), 200-01.

The passive hands

Held loosely by their golden weight of chain,–

The heavy folds of mantle and of robe

Parktaking of her majesty,–the mien

So full of royal dignity and grace,–

Thus, with a cloud upon the perfect face,

A shadowy sorrow veiling all its fire,

A world of passion sleeping on the lips

And longing eyes that spoke the heart within,–

Zenobia walked through Rome.

She does not see

The changing looks of piety or of hate

That fall on her from unfamiliar eyes;

Nor hear the rumble of the chariot wheels

That bear the haughty conqueror. Away

Beyond the yellow Tiber and the flow

Of the blue sea that laps the Syrian strand,

Beyond the reach of desert and of plain

She stands beside the temples of her gods

In fair Palmyra. Round her in the air

The swaying palm trees nod their tufted plumes,

And Eastern blossoms, drunk with eastern bloom,

Fling perfume from their honeyed chalices.

She hears within her palace walls once more

Her children's voices, playing in the shade

That filters through the garden walks. Or proud

With all the blazoned pageantry of war,

She leads again from out the city gates

The shining legions of her dauntless hosts,

And hears, like incense rising from their lips,

The shout of praise that lifts her name to Heaven.

Her herat is with Palmyra as it stood

In bygone days, her glory and her pride;

Nor in her silent musing does she dream

Of that dark hour when captive and alone

She saw the royal purple of her robe

Grow dim forever with the stain of blood,

And dust of desolation!

O pale mute marble! most serenly still,

yet eloquent with more than voiceful thought,

Thus stand forever, holding through all time

The passing record of a passing hour;

And, with the seal of silence on thy lips,

Yet speak the lessons of a vanished past!