QUEENS IN RED AND WHITE

I SERVE two queens, a queen in white, All virginal and exquisite, With lips too cold for man’s delight And eyes where cloistered shadows flit, Like little nuns that softly pace Twin cells and ever gaze upon Glory of Mary Virgin’s grace, Mayhap the Grail from earth withdrawn. I serve two queens, in crimson guise The other flaunts the sullen hours, A splendid scorn in sinning eyes, On lips like passion-tainted flowers; Crowned with dull gold, an Eastern queen, Her sceptred arm a world enfolds, And I, the maddest worldling seen, Within the strange mad court she holds. I serve two queens, in white and red, Pale icicle and lambent flame, One’s kingdom holy as the dead, One wielding empery of shame. Ah, what a peasant slave am I! For ever doomed, in woeful plight, To mark divided years go by, The fretted serf of red and white.