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THE MARBLE QUEEN, by                 Poet Analysis     Poet's Biography
First Line: Near the stately german palace
Last Line: Has kept his word at last.
Alternate Author Name(s): Coolidge, Susan
Subject(s): Sculpture & Sculptors


NEAR the stately German palace,
Amid the deep park-green,
In a hushed and guarded silence
There sleeps the marble queen.

More beautiful than life can be
She lies in deepest rest,
The fair hands folded quietly
Upon her moveless breast.

There is a smile upon her lips,
The cheeks are snowy fair,
Half-shows the happy dimple
That one time nestled there.

They made her young and lovely;
The sculptor would not trace
A single line of pain or tears
Upon the sweet, sweet face.

But those who loved her dearest,
Knew that she died of grief,
With a broken-hearted prayer to Heaven
For her dear land's relief;

They knew how long and vainly
She strove against the tide
Which swept and ruined Europe
To swell one despot's pride—

And remembered her appeal to God,
To justice soon or late
As every inch a queen she stood,
Shorn of her lands and state.

Her husband, gentler than herself,
Soon tired of earth and died;
And they carved his image like her own
And laid it by her side.

But her young son, of sterner stuff,
Had his mother's heart and brow,
And he stood beside the marble form
And thus he made his vow:

"Mother beloved, they killed thee,
And I swear this unto thee,
If I ever live to be a man
Your wrong shall righted be."

He made the vow in boyhood,
His locks were long and fair,
And he kept the vow an aged King
With frost upon his hair.

He kept it on the awful day
When Paris, pale with hate,
Watched the helmet-spikes of Germany
Pour through her hard-won gate.

When the gray-bearded King rode in,
His hand upon his sword,
He rose up in his stirrups
And he uttered one stern word.

"My mother is avenged," he cried;
And his generals caught the cry,
And the vision of the fair dead queen
Flashed before every eye.

Now while the cannon thundered
And the bells made answer fine,
"Louisa for the Fatherland!"
Rang through the German line.

Rest sweetly, Genius of thy Land!
Full sixty years have past,
But thy boy, thy gray-haired Emperor,
Has kept his word at last.





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