THE STATUES AND THE TEAR

All night a fountain pleads,

Telling her beads,

Her tinkling beads monotonous 'neath the moon;
And where she springs atween,

Two statues lean—

Two Kings, their marble beards with moonlight
strewn.


Till hate had frozen speech,

Each hated each,

Hated and died, and went unto his place:
And still inveterate

They lean and hate

With glare of stone implacable, face to face.

One, who bade set them here
In stone austere,

To both was dear, and did not guess at all:
Yet with her new-wed lord

Walking the sward

Paused, and for two dead friends a tear let fall.

She turn'd and went her way.

Yet in the spray

The shining tear attempts, but cannot lie.
Night-long the fountain drips,

But even slips

Untold that one bead of her rosary:
While they, who know it would

Lie if it could,

Lean on and hate, watching it, eye to eye.