“My Lord, I had forgott the Fart.”
Queen Elizabeth I, as told by Aubrey
When Oxford first appeared at Court,
He blushed to hear a loud report
Behind him as he bent his knee
Before Elizabeth, and she
Must have shown she too had heard
By uttering a witty word,
Such as: “That noise, my Lord, imparts
That you think I’m the queen of hearts.”
At all events, he felt such shame
As not to show his face again
For seven years. When he returned
To Court, he doubtless thought he’d earned
The right to find his fault forgot,
But no, the witty queen had not:
She made the other courtiers laugh
With what’s shown in my epigraph.
Though time had worn her teeth, her tongue
Grew sharper than when she was young,
And it was, even in her youth,
As sharp as any serpent’s tooth!
Whetted by seven years, it bit
At anything that stirred her wit;
And seven years had made that jest
Too pestilent to be repressed.
If it seems strange so great a queen
Could be so small as to demean
Herself by mouthing such a word
As even then was seldom heard,
She doubtless felt she was above
What others might be chary of:
So low a thing was quite all right
When uttered from so high a height!
–Henry George Fischer
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