Le Jeudi de Josephine: A Lady's Sonnet

This Jeudi, I’m posting a beautiful sonnet for the Empress Josephine. I found it on this site (Famous Women: Sacred and Profane by Glen Levin Swiggett); where you’ll find a sonnet written for every great woman in history. There’s also one written on Marie Antoinette that I think is just so perfect. I have to say that although I’m fascinated by Josephine, I also adore Marie Antoinette, la Reine Martyre.

Here is the one for Josephine:

Letizia, mother of Napoleon,
So dearly known to him as Madame mère
And to the world for her maternal care
Of him at Elba, for herself has won
Affection greater than we shower upon
His Empress whose great beauty did not spare
Her, nor her tact, when he at last did dare
Divorce and exile her to Malmaison.
Napoleon's wish to found a dynasty
Far greater than his land had ever known,
To kings and princes of the Church and State
Related disavowed her for sterility,
Though in her former children she had shown
Such gifts as did him highly fascinate.
And, for Marie Antoinette
A king of France once said, I am the State;
And with this thought so lived he paved the way
For revolution at a later day,
When of French queens the most unfortunate,
Marie of Austria, that sorry fate
Endured from frenzied populace, a prey
To passions, dead to pity, that would slay,
Their baser humors to propitiate.
Marie was but a child when as a bride
She came to France, becoming soon a queen.
Caught in the current of intrigue and war,
And, with her husband, helpless in the tide
Of hate, she bravely faced the guillotine
When came her turn to ride the fatal car.


And this one for Marie Antoinette:

A king of France once said, I am the State;
And with this thought so lived he paved the way
For revolution at a later day,
When of French queens the most unfortunate,
Marie of Austria, that sorry fate
Endured from frenzied populace, a prey
To passions, dead to pity, that would slay,
Their baser humors to propitiate.

Marie was but a child when as a bride
She came to France, becoming soon a queen.
Caught in the current of intrigue and war,
And, with her husband, helpless in the tide
Of hate, she bravely faced the guillotine
When came her turn to ride the fatal car.

Painting: http://www.translating-william-shakespeare.com/image-files/sonnet_mulready.gif