Your ways are not my ways

Long I have yearned to see these hills

On the ship these many days.

Your castle fine, your wealth of gold,

Great power you do wield;

Will I be accepted as your wife,

Being from so far afield?

I must put off my Eastern clothes, alas,

And dress in the Western ways

Will I ever get used to the high-necked gowns,

The corsets and the stays?

The language and the customs

And a thousand other things--

Sometimes I feel my new life caused

My freedom to take wing.

But this is my fate, as our fathers decreed

In their pact so long ago

So here I am and here I'll stay

For weal or aye for woe.

--fleur   11.iv.04