Page:Poems Piatt.djvu/77

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 she
Haunts 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 fall
Beside my lovely head to-night,
          If I were a Queen.

Then she of Egypt—with the asp
 To drain my deadly beauty dry?—