To Lady Jane

Romance was always young.
  You come today
  Just eight years old
  With marvellous dark hair.
  Younger than Dante found you
  When you turned
  His heart into the way
  That found the heavenly stair.

  Perhaps we must be strangers.
  I confess
  My soul this hour is Dante's,
  And your care
  Should be for dolls
  Whose painted hands caress
  Your marvellous dark hair.

  Romance, with moonflower face
  And morning eyes,
  And lips whose thread of scarlet prophesies
  The canticles of a coming king unknown,
  Remember, when you join him
  On his throne,
  Even me, your far off troubadour,
  And wear
  For me some trifling rose
  Beneath your veil,
  Dying a royal death,
  Happy and pale,
  Choked by the passion,
  The wonder and the snare,
  The glory and despair
  That still will haunt and own
  Your marvellous dark hair.