Poems (Piatt)/Volume 1/If I were a Queen
IF I WERE A QUEEN.
"But if you were a Queen?" you said. Well, then I think my favourite pageShould have a yellow, restless head, And be just your own pretty age.So sweet in violet velvet, he Should tend my butterflies in herds,Or help that belted knight, the bee, Win honey, or make little birdsSome little songs to sing for me— If I were a Queen.
A Queen—you saw one sitting by A tall man in a picture? WellHe had a harp? You need not try— Her name is one you can not tellAnd so you wonder if I could Be Isolt, then? Not she, I fear,To save Sir Tristram of the Wood And all his tripping silver deer;For it were better to be good, If I were a Queen.
Nor Guinevere———You ask, would I Be Queen Elizabeth? Oh! no;For, then, should I not have to die And leave, all hanging in a row,Two thousand dresses? Could I bear To sit, majestic, cross, and grey,With red paint on my nose, or wear, Down in my grave till Judgment Day,The ring of Essex burning there, If I were a Queen?
Now let me ask myself awhile. Mary of Scotland, then?—since sheHaunts her grey castle with a smile That one man may have died to see:She, fairest in Romance's light; She, saddest-storied of them all;She—but it would not please me quite To climb a scaffold, or to fallBeside my lovely head to-night, If I were a Queen.
Then she of Egypt—with the asp To drain my deadly beauty dry?— To see my Roman lover clasp His sword with surer love, and dieCloser to it than me? Not so. No desert-snake with nursing graceShould draw my fierce heart's fiercest glow; No coward of my conqueror's-raceShould offer me his blood, I know— If I were a Queen.
Boädicéa? I were afraid To see her scythéd chariots shine!———Nor Vashti; for she disobeyed Her lord, the king in kingly wine!Then she, the Queen of the East, who found The Wisest not so well arrayed,In all his glory, as the ground Arrays its lilies?—Would I fadeInto some shrunken Bible mound, If I were a Queen?
Semiramis? Were it not sweet To have a palace mirror show[1]How mad Assyria at my feet Might lie down like a lamb? And oh! To stand defiant, in the glare Of rising war, and softly say:"My Beauty will subdue them!" Rare And royal bloom must drop away;Nor would I as a ghost look fair, If I were a Queen.
Penelopé! No, on my word: Vexed grievously with suitors, whileMuch-wandering Ulysses heard Fine singing at the sirens' isle,Too small were Ithaca for me! Then she whose gold hair glitters highWith stars caught in its tangles?[2]—See, How beautiful it is! But IShould choose my hair on Earth to be, If I were a Queen!
Nor slight, blonde Marie Antoinette? Nor she the Austrians called their King?Nor any Blanche, or Margaret? Nor Russia's Catharine? Would I bringThe Spanish woman's loth heart, then, From Aragon to England's throne? Or be the Italian, widowed, when She, in a garret at Cologne,Starved, a grey exile, shunned of men, If I were a Queen?
What Queen? Titania—since it seems A woman never quite can tireOf kissing long, fair ears! In dreams My Gentle Joy I will admire,And—but there is no Fairyland Left in the crowded world, no roomFor dew, for anything but sand. Put out the moonshine, fold the bloom.My feet could find no space to stand, If I were a Queen.
Ah! still I ask myself, what Queen? Well, one whose days were almost done,Who felt her grave-grass turning green, Who saw the low light of the sunShrink from her palace windows, while Her whole court watched beside her bed,Ready to say, without a smile: "We loved the Queen. The Queen is dead."Then they should grieve a little while, If I were a Queen.
And my whole court, I think, should show Three little heads of lightest gold,Two others of a darker glow; And One bent low enough to holdBetween pale, quivering hands. And then Some Silence should receive my soul,My name should fade from lips of men, My pleasant funeral-bells should tollThis hour, and dust be dust again— If I were a Queen.