Robert Lowell
THE BANKE ,R'S DAUGHTER
(Marie de Medici, shortly after the assassination of
Henri IV, her husband)
My humorous Tuscan otherworldliness
And Hapsburg lewdness triumphed less and less
In this provincial capital at first;
Now the Woman of Fortune's reimbursed,
And I am queen. I'll need the Spaniard's pride,
Who never laughs, an armadillo's hide,
Gizzard and legs of ostrich- God knows what–
To stomach Paris. Blowing cold and hot,
I'll work the bellows ... Guise and Huguenot,
Bishop and Bible, counterplot and plot,
Gunpowder blown from England, Holland, Spain,
The Pope, Geneva . . . I am queen. I reign.
Round as a cannon? Banker?
L'Etrangere?
The French detest me? Figs! I breed. I bear
Blood-royal blossoms from their sterile stock–
Like Moses, I strike water from the rock.
Why chew the carpet, couple with revolt,
When giddy Henry slips the marriage bolt
And sleeps in single lodgings on the town-
I was the bedding for his hollow crown.
I played the man? No, no! Perish the day!
Once this poor country egg from Florence lay
At her accouchement, such a virtuous ton
Of woman, only women thought her one–
King Henry pirouetted on
his
heel
And jested, "Look, my cow's producing vea1."
Paris finds Henry worth a Mass- Amen!
Good wives must follow her example then,
o
Bourbon, when the Belle of Paris
rings
Her golden changes on the heart of kings.
