Elizabethan

Some gentler passion slide into my mind, For I am soft and made of melting snow —Queen Elizabeth I Her sex sent her mother to the tower, made her father profligate with arrogant desires, but she was made of flint and backbone. Think of a young girl in a blue velvet bodice, a white collar and lace, the very prototype of virginal. Think of a woman, her court enlivened by suitors and lovers in doublets, in brocaded cloaks, despite suspicions of their motives staining the sheets, the way cups of spicy, flowery mead were sipped despite the possibility of poison. Even the crown of the sun must go down each night. Could she have stood at the prow of a ship in that great Armada she ordered, instead of at a window, waiting for urgent results? Could she have guessed that the words of a man she inspired, carved into the marble of ages, had a muscular beauty more than equal to her own worldly triumphs? Daughter, Queen, Ruler of roiling seas, of meandering rivers and meadows, of armies of soldiers, their swords and armor glittering like planets to her sun. Namesake to an age. And Poet? When she turned to the empty parchment (or once to a windowpane, a diamond for quill) everything must have gone quiet. Even a queen is naked before the naked page, awaiting not the generous spoils owed to a victor but the gifts freely given of a besotted muse.