QUEENS
by: John Millington Synge
(1871-1909)
- EVEN dog-days we let pass
- Naming Queens in Glenmacnass,
- All the rare and royal names
- Wormy sheepskin yet retains,
- Etain, Helen, Maeve, and Fand,
- Golden Deirdre's tender hand,
- Bert, the big-foot, sung by Villon,
- Cassandra, Ronsard found in Lyon.
- Queens of Sheba, Meath and Connaught,
- Coifed with crown, or gaudy bonnet,
- Queens whose finger once did stir men,
- Queens were eaten of fleas and vermin,
- Queens men drew like Monna Lisa,
- Or slew with drugs in Rome and Pisa,
- We named Lucrezia Crivelli,
- And Titian's lady with amber belly,
- Queens acquainted in learned sin,
- Jane of Jewry's slender shin:
- Queens who cut the bogs of Glanna,
- Judith of Scripture, and Gloriana,
- Queens who wasted the East by proxy,
- Or drove the ass-cart, a tinker's doxy,
- Yet these are rotten--I ask their pardon--
- And we've the sun on rock and garden,
- These are rotten, so you're the Queen
- Of all the living, or have been.
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