The Sleeping Beauty.

Know you a storied lady, lost in sleep
With living blossoms in her braided hair?
The unremembered years her secrets keep;
She has a rendezvous with silence there.
The dawns pass over her; she does not stir;
Across her muted lips the sunbeams dance,
And birds fly in to flirt their wings for her,
And droning bees who would disturb her trance.
She is so still the very mice creep out
To hold their councils 'neath her oaken bed;
They have no fear of her, no pang of doubt;
She could not heed them less if she were dead.
They do not know when the enchantment fell
Or if to-morrow she will slumber yet;
So brief their time no news have they to tell;
So full their days, small creatures soon forget.
Nor do they know that past her lattice bars
Each night she goes in little lonely shoon
To walk the meadows of the fallen stars,
The alabaster stairways of the moon.

—Winifred Tennant.

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