William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. (1878–1962). Anthology of Magazine Verse for 1920.

Exile

I HAVE made grief a gorgeous, queenly thing,

And worn my melancholy with an air.

My tears were big as stars to deck my hair,

My silence stunning as a sapphire ring.

Oh, more than any light the dark could fling

A glamour over me to make me rare,

Better than any color I could wear

The pearly grandeur that the shadows bring.

What is there left to joy for such as I?

What throne can dawn upraise for me who found

The dusk so royal and so rich a one?

Laughter will whirl and whistle on the sky—

Far from this riot I shall stand uncrowned,

Disrobed, bereft, an outcast in the sun.

The North American Review