Explore "The Queen of Hearts" by Christina Georgina Rossetti on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
How comes it, Flora, that, whenever we / Play cards together, you invariably, / However the pack parts, / Still hold the Queen of Hearts?
I've scanned you with a scrutinizing gaze, / Resolved to fathom these your secret ways: / But, sift them as I will, / Your ways are secret still.
I cut and shuffle; shuffle, cut, again; / But all my cutting, shuffling, proves in vain: / Vain hope, vain forethought, too; / That Queen still falls to you.
I dropped her once, prepense; but, ere the deal / Was dealt, your instinct seemed her loss to feel: / "There should be one card more," / You said, and searched the floor.
I cheated once: I made a private notch / In Heart-Queen's back, and kept a lynx-eyed watch; / Yet such another back / Deceived me in the pack:
The Queen of Clubs assumed by arts unknown / An imitative dint that seemed my own; / This notch, not of my doing, / Misled me to my ruin.
It baffles me to puzzle out the clew, / Which must be skill, or craft, or luck in you: / Unless, indeed, it be / Natural affinity.