With painted slender folded hands
She waited what might come,
Her head was tyred with jewelled bands,
Her mouth was sweet and dumb.
Her cymar was of ardassine,
Fire red from throat to hem,
Broidered with Turkis stones therein —
She gave her soul for them.
Faint cassia and love-haunted myrrh
Made perilous her hair,
And what was Sidon's woe to her
Whose face was king's despair?
Nor life nor love from those cold lips,
But ah, in what degree,
Her passionate lover leans and sips
Her death-bright poesy.