Poems (Piatt)/Volume 1/A Masked Ball

by Sarah Piatt

A MASKED BALL.

There, in the music strangely met,
 From lands and ages wide apart,
They came, like ghosts remembering yet
 The old sweet yearning of the heart.

What sad and shining names were heard!
 What stories swept the dust, like trains!
What minster-buried echoes stirred!
 What backward splendours, backward stains!

Still two by two, as moved by fate,
 They came from silence and from song;
The tyranny of love or hate
 With that mock-pageant passed along.

There kings and cardinals long gone
 Forgot their feuds, and joined the dance.
His Holiness himself looked on,
 With something merry in his glance.

There, priestly, yet not loth to please,
 Stood Abelard; by some sad whim,
In convent coif, poor Héloise
 Was near, confessing—what—to him.

There, with forlornest beauty wan,
 Young Amy Robsart walked unseen,
While my Lord Leicester's looks were on
 Elizabeth, his gracious queen.

There—though the blonde Rowena gazed,
 Gold-haired and stately, with surprise—
Jewelled and dark, Rebecca raised
 The Saxon knight half-wistful eyes.

And there, despite his inky cloak,
 The melancholy Dane seemed gay,
And to Polonius' daughter spoke
 Things Shakespeare does not have him say.

"I think," he said, "I know you by
 That most fantastic wreath you wear."
She, with a little languid sigh,
 Asked—if his father's ghost were there.

"That voice—though veiled, it can not hide.
 One trifling favour I would ask:
Give me—Yourself." "No, no," she cried;
 "You are—a stranger in a mask."

What more? Ah, well! Ophelia fled-
 From Hamlet—when his mask was raised.
"I—was—mistaken," Hamlet said,
 As in Ophelia's face he gazed.

Ah, in the world, as at the ball,
 There is a mask that lovers wear;
We call it Youth. But let it fall,
 Then,—Hamlet and Ophelia stare.