Explore "The Captive" by Ella Wheeler Wilcox on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
My lady is robed for the ball to-night, / All in a shimmer and silken sheen. / She glides down the stairs like a thing of light, / The ballroom's beautiful queen.
Priceless gems on her bosom glow -- / Half hid by laces a queen might wear. / Robed is she, as befits, you know, / The wife of a millionaire.
Gliding along at her liege lord's side, / Out-shining all in that company, / Into the mind of the old man's bride / There creeps a curious simile.
She thinks how once in the Long Ago, / A beautiful captive, all aflame / With jewels that weighed her down like woe, / Close in the wake of her captor came.
All day long in that mocking plight, / She followed him in a dumb despair; / And the people thought her a goodly sight, / Decked in her jewels rare.
And now at her lawful master's side, / With a pain in her heart, as great as then / (So thinks this old man's beautiful bride), / Zenobia walks again.