The Infanta

Decemberists
Música y Letra: Colin Meloy



Here she comes
in her palanquin on the back
of an elephant,
on a bed
made of linen and sequins and silk.
All astride
on her father's line with the king
and his concubines and her nurse
with her pitchers of liquors and milk.

And we'll all come praise the infanta.
And we'll all come praise the infanta.

Among five-score pachyderm,
each canapied and passengered,
sit the duke
and the duchess's luscious young girls,
within sight of the baroness
(seething spite for this live largess)
by her side sits the baron.
Her barrenness barbs her.

And we'll all come praise the infanta.
And we'll all come praise the infanta.

A phalanx on camelback,
thirty ranks
on her forward tack follow close,
their shiny bright standards a'waving.
While behind,
in their coaching fours,
ride the wives of the king of Moors
and the veiled young virgin,
the prince's betrothed.

And we'll all come praise the infanta.
And we'll all come praise the infanta.

And as she sits upon her place,
her innocence laid on her face.
From all atop the parapets blow
a multitude of coronets:
melodies rhapsodical and fair.
And all our hearts afire,
the sky ablaze with cannonfire,
we all raise our voices to the air,
to the air...

And above
all this falderal on a bed
made of chaparral, she is laid,
a coronal placed on her brow.
And the babe,
all in slumbered dreams of a place
filled with quiet screams and the lake
where her cradle was pulled from the water.

And we'll all come praise the infanta.
And we'll all come praise the infanta.
And we'll all come praise the infanta.