There once was a kingdom

Take my hand, just you and me

and let's find out what is hidden here.

There's glasses and coins and tons of alcohol

spilled over the floor.

Wait! Shhh! Someone is coming...

Is it one? Are there two? Three? Four?

We are surrounded, there's nowhere to run.

Marianne! Please, stay close to me,

lest there be soldiers, lest they be fins.

But indeed, the sun is warm, the clouds gray,

tell that any painter well those colors could paint.

But yes indeed, Marianne, don't let go of my hand 

or they will wed you to our uncle

and that is no future we could bear.

Oh lord, they are in the room...

please don't check the drawer, please don't...

...

Today I'm off to meet my sister.

We haven't seen each other in years,

in fact since she was wed to our uncle.

Tells the tale that her youngest has an enormous jaw.

It is clear he is one of ours, yet the inconvenient truth

is that carrying the blood of Austria 

is damming and is cruel.

Tell that he can't read or write,

tell that he's slow to talk,

tell that he can't eat right,

tell that he drools, always open mouth.

Be as it may, the Atlas he is.

The pillars were broken, the feat was achieved,

that a larger sea, an ocean

belongs to the king.

Ah, my poor sister, and her meandering dreams,

Could she ever have imagined herself as a queen?

But dammed be our illusions

and dammed be all kings.

...

He lived a noble life, the last of his kind.

What was it all for? What came out of war?

A king there sits, bright and new.

The old one long gone and his life untold.

Plus ultra remains, but the spit sways

to the time where the lion advanced to the edge. 

The ocean stolen, and so half the beyond,

and of us remains a fragment evermore so small.

Let this be the tale of a quivering kingdom

that once ruled the oceans but now sinks beneath

a much greater kingdom with much greater deeds.

Tell that this is a cycle,

tell that we were once here.