Her blood is blood of Ptolemy-
There's nothing pharaoh in her veins.
Yet she, the queen conscripting me,
Commands I put my own in chains!
What more- forlorn and worn by war-
I weary bore her wretched times.
Audacity decreed: No more!
And so I fled her House of Crimes.
Now seven years have gone and fled-
And I the post that she commands-
And though she seeks my paltry head
She’ll never find it in these lands ...
For I am fled beyond the Rhine,
Beyond her foreign yoke and rod,
Into a wilderness divine
Where freedom is my only god.
And still I feel her brooding skies
Are peering on this smold’ring hearth ...
Her malice and her livid eyes
They curse the Phoenix of my birth.
-jwm
