Queen of Hearts

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

Rowley, Rosemarie (1942 - 0)

Original Text

Rosemarie Rowley, In Memory of Her (Dublin: Rowan Tree Press, 2004): 82

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. Back to Line

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. Back to Line

RPO poem Editors

Ian Lancashire

RPO Edition

2007

Rhyme

ababcdcdefefgg

Form

sonnet