And when the opera came she was the queen, At least a queen whose sovereignty withstood Encroaching claims to ripen into rights. But then if all were lost where not a million People lived as yet, and where, oh well Packers and others threw their heavier gold In what was once a scale of primogeniture, Rome stood and London stood and Paris. Have your own way at home, the mood began, I am off here where you can scarcely come. The next place is the best, a far off place Has teasing witcheries to those at home. Her husband now was dead some years, the children Grown up, or off to school, a daughter married To an Italian count kept state in Florence Where Browning came, with whom our queen would fence In spiritual dialectics. In her travels She had known Ibsen, Patti and George Eliot, Sat as a dinner guest by Beaconsfield, And taken tea upon Hawarden’s lawn. And so in escritoires and cabinets She kept mementoes of her days abroad: Like letters from George Eliot, “Ferishtah’s Fancies” inscribed by Robert. And in the course of time this three-floored house Was filled with treasures, tapestries, Etruscan things, and faience peacock blue; And oriental jade with letters of gold. And there she reigned, but lived alone The house kept by French maids And impeccable butlers. And so the years went, and she saw at last The city start to slip away from her And make her royal isolation An ignorant solitude!