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…Poems attributed to Queen Elizabeth I
On Monsieur’s Departure
BY QUEEN ELIZABETH I
I grieve and dare not show my discontent,
I love and yet am forced to seem to hate,
I do, yet dare not say I ever meant,
I seem stark mute but inwardly do prate.
I am and not, I freeze and yet am burned,
Since from myself another self I turned.My care is like my shadow in the sun,
Follows me flying, flies when I pursue it,
Stands and lies by me, doth what I have done.
His too familiar care doth make me rue it.
No means I find to rid him from my breast,
Till by the end of things it be supprest.Some gentler passion slide into my mind,
For I am soft and made of melting snow;
Or be more cruel, love, and so be kind.
Let me or float or sink, be high or low.
Or let me live with some more sweet content,
Or die and so forget what love ere meant.
Littrachure | Mr. Bingley | 
October 17, 2014 3:30 pm
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Beautifully put. Anyone who’s ever gone through a breakup can relate to that.
Especially in her case, Doc, where it was the ultimate work place romance.
Monsieur, the brother of the French King, was no prize. Elizabeth was also beyond childbearing by that time (she was in her forties at least, which was a lot further along then than it is now) and it was very unlikely that the two of them would have produced an heir, which was the whole point of the match as far as the nation was concerned.
Elizabeth lked to carry on flirtations with younger men almost up to the day she died at age 70.
On the other hand, you have to admire the skill with which she wrote poetry (she wrote prose with equal facility). I am particularly struck by it since I am reading, for a class, poems from a book entitled “The Best American Poems of 2014.” If those are the best, the Good Lord preserve me from having to read the worst. They are truly awful.