Dear royal France! I fix the happy year <br />At forty--seven, because that Christmas--tide <br />There passed through Pau the Duke of Montpensier, <br />Fresh from his nuptials with his Spanish bride; <br />And because I, unwilling, shared their pride, <br />As youngest of the English children there, <br />By offering flowers to the fair glorified <br />Daughter of Bourbon standing on the stair-- <br />A point in history. When we came at last <br />To this gay Paris I was doomed to love, <br />There were already rumours of the blast <br />That swept the Orleans songsters from their grove <br />In flight to London, after Polignac <br />And the true king, at their King Bourgeois' back.<br /><br />Wilfrid Scawen Blunt<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/a-new-pilgrimage-sonnet-xii/
