The duchess objected to the Amen, which I thought gave an air of forgiveness and chose jugée to the whole thing; also she said it wasn’t Persian enough, as though I were trying to sell her a kitten whose mother had married for love rather than pedigree. So I recast it entirely, and the new version read⁠—

“The hen that laid thee moons ago, who knows

In what Dead Yesterday her shades repose;

To some election turn thy waning span

And rain thy rottenness on fiscal foes.”