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