RPO -- Rosemarie Rowley : Queen of Hearts

Rosemarie Rowley (1942-)

Queen of Hearts
i.m. Diana, Princess of Wales (1961-1997)

1Hers, from childhood the bitter pain of tears

2Dreamed a peep-shy wedding to a Prince

3Her one longing to be cherished through the years

4By a lover, husband, brother: not since

5The beginning of time a perfect love be found

6To ease the pain of separation and of grief

7She gave to others her complete round

8Of compassion, love, yet was taken by a thief

9To steal her image, peddle it to crowds

10Make her true love of children mawkish

11In death, we see her vision through such clouds

12Her smile radiant, joyful, a little rakish

13For hers is the Queendom, the power and the glory

14Alone at the Taj Mahal, rapt in the story.

Notes

1] Rowley won an American Library of Poetry award for this poem in 1997.

14] In 1992, officially as a member of the royal family, Diana visited the Taj Mahal in Agra, India; and her loneliness, captured in a photograph as she sat by herself before this mausoleum to love, became an icon of her plight.

Online text copyright © 2009, Ian Lancashire (the Department of English) and the University of Toronto.
Copyright © Rosemarie Rowley 2007. Not to be republished without permission of the poet.
Published by the Web Development Group, Information Technology Services, University of Toronto Libraries.

Original text: Rosemarie Rowley, In Memory of Her (Dublin: Rowan Tree Press, 2004): 82
RPO poem editor: Ian Lancashire
RP edition: 2007
Recent editing: 1:2007/3/20*1:2007/3/21

Form: sonnet
Rhyme: ababcdcdefefgg

Other poems by Rosemarie Rowley

Rosemarie Rowley (1942-)

Queen of Heartsi.m. Diana, Princess of Wales (1961-1997)

Queen of Hearts
i.m. Diana, Princess of Wales (1961-1997)