“Surely, at least to us, being corpses royal,
A meet repose is owing by the loyal?”
“—Perhaps a scaffold!” Mary Stuart sighed,
“If such still be. It was that way I died.”
“—Ods! Far more like,” said he the many-wived,
“That for a wedding ’tis this work’s contrived.
“Ha-ha! I never would bow down to Rimmon,
But I had a rare time with those six women!”
“Not all at once?” gasped he who loved confession.
“Nay, nay!” said Hal. “That would have been transgression.”
“—They build a catafalque here, black and tall,
Perhaps,” mused Richard, “for some funeral?”
And Anne chimed in: “Ah, yes: it maybe so!”
“Nay!” squeaked Eliza. “Little you seem to know—
“Clearly ’tis for some crowning here in state,
As they crowned us at our long bygone date;
“Though we’d no such a power of carpentry,
But let the ancient architecture be;
“If I were up there where the parsons sit,
In one of my gold robes, I’d see to it!”