To strike a playful note for today, the poem I chose comes from a lovely children’s book titled Kings and Queens, by Eleanor and Herbert Farjeon, illustrated by Rosalind Thornycroft. This book was first published in 1932, and my new edition was published by the British Library in 2011.

Of course every good little anglophile should know their English kings and queens; this book documents every English monarch, from William I (1066) to the current queen Elizabeth II, with a witty poem and a striking illustration. What caught my attention was the complex meter each poem uses; today’s choice, a poem about the terrible king Edward II (the first Marlowe play I ever saw), uses a triple rhyme scheme to great effect. As you should be doing with all these poems, please read it aloud:

The lovely work of Rosalind Thornycroft

Edward II

1307

Edward the Second

Is commonly reckoned

One of the feeblest of all of our kings.

Favours he lavished on

Pretty Piers Gaveston,

Giving him duchies and riches and rings.

This sugar-candified

Puffed-up and dandified

Man defied all of the Barons with sneers,

Playing his foolery

Dressed up in joolery

Sent by King Ned to his Sugar-plum Piers.

***

Though Ned was mad about

This giddy gadabout,

Others had had about all they could bear;

So the King’s favourite

They made to pay for it

On a find day for it, spring in the air.

When those that hated Piers

Decapitated Piers

Edward was sorry, but everyone said,

“We executed him

Seeing it suited him–

Long ere we cut it off, Piers lost his head.”