The Castle Bleak Poem by David Lewis Paget

The Queen had paid the eunuchs to
Decapitate the King,
And once the deed was done, she thought,
‘I'm Queen of everything.'
She taxed the peasants to the hilt
Took half of every crop,
Her greed was quite rapacious, so
She never thought to stop.

She reigned up in the Castle Bleak
A fortress tall and grim,
That many armies tried to breach
But never could get in,
The only weakness she could see
From top, and looking down,
The trees that grew so tall against
The wall had made her frown.

‘We'll have to chop those poplar trees
They're getting rather tall,
An army might climb up one night,
They're right against the wall, '
Her lover, Lord Chantrell had sighed
And tried to put her off,
‘Those poplar trees are beautiful,
Too beautiful to chop.'

She didn't raise the point again
But went off to the tower,
Where she had locked the eunuchs to
Prevent them taking power,
She sent her German swordsman in
To do the deed, she said,
‘I want to see you come on out
With every eunuch's head.'

The Queen was grim and merciless,
She'd act on every whim,
Her thoughts were dark and tortuous
And even with her kin,
Her cousin liked the mead too much
And slutted round the town,
Was gifted with a barrel of it,
Upside down, to drown.

She even chided Lord Chantrell
For eyeing off her maid,
She said, ‘You two can go to hell, '
She thought the girl was laid.
They built a bonfire in the court
The maid was bound and tied,
And Chantrell watched the flames devour
The beauty he had spied.

One day upon the tower top
Chantrell unsheathed his blade,
And sliced his lover's head clean off
In payment for the maid,
Her head flew down the tower wall,
Her final thoughts were these:
‘These branches break my fall, I'm glad
I didn't chop the trees.'

22 January 2017