In A Beautiful Pea Green Boat
The Queen and her pussy-cats went to sea
In a beautiful pea-green boat
Which Tarannon Falastur built one day
When he wanted to set her afloat
Flying past Umbar her vessel was seen
By the light of a sickle moon
But the Queen and her cats nevermore have been
By the light of the day, by the depth of a dream
Reported on native or foreign scene
At daybreak or evening or noon
And Tarannon thought, in a satisfied way
That wasn't a moment too soon, too soon,
That wasn't a moment too soon.
For the Queen had a very unpleasant mein
And it wasn't a moment too soon.
The Queen was nefarious, lonely and sad
And her black cats, three times three
Were softer than shadows when they crept out
To see what they wanted to see
And all that they noticed and all that they heard
The lies of a lover, an unguarded word
They studied and twisted, surmised and inferred
And into the ear of the Queen they were purred
And the Queen would receive them with glee
And all feared the shadows, bright eyed, softly furred
But the Queen would receive them with glee
Then into the places the dark could not go
And under the light of the sun
Came sapphire eyes and a coat white as snow
with a way to discover what no one should know
that even the shadows would shun
The innocent kitten that played on the grass
caused the strongest in Gondor to curse when she passed
for she was no time honored daughter of Bast
But a demon who tortured for fun
(And Tarannon saw she was tied to the mast
when the days of her prowling were done)
So the Queen and her pussy-cats went to sea
In a beautiful pea-green boat
Which Tarannon Falastur built one day
When he wanted to set her afloat
Flying past Umbar her vessel was seen
By the light of a sickle moon
But the Queen and her cats nevermore have been
By the light of the day, by the depth of a dream
Reported on native or foreign scene
At daybreak or evening or noon
And Tarannon thought, in a satisfied way
That wasn't a moment too soon, too soon,
That wasn't a moment too soon.
For the Queen had a very unpleasant mein
And it wasn't a moment too soon.
*******
Notes: The story of Queen Beruthiel appears in Unfinished Tales. It has only
a handful of lines, and I tried to use as many of them in the poem as I could
manage.
--with apologies to Edward Lear