The Eiffel Lady

Ridiculed as giddy and smokestack, a hateful shadow and barbaric;
Now she stands as the emblem of romance;
A metallic rose in the city of love.

Revolted artistes despised her, abhorred and plotted against;
Determined she would never rise, they built a political fence.
Yet for four decades she stood - the highest of edifices - to science’s great good;
Never meant to live past twenty, the wrought matron enjoys her century.

Skirted by lazy river, flanked by sunny mall. Tourists flocking to her, the Beauty of Gaul.
In her glory they sit; eating and drinking. Laughing and sighing. Cameras blinking.

Prompt: The Eiffel Tower
Not using any of the following words; France/French/Francais, Paris/Parisian, Seine, Iron Lady, Champ de Mars, Gustave Eiffel, Tallest Monument or Tower

Line Count: 10

Second Place January 2018

*Historical note: below is an excerpt from a petition called "Artists against the Eiffel Tower" that was sent to the Minister of Works and Commissioner for the Exposition, Charles Alphand.

"We, writers, painters, sculptors, architects and passionate devotees of the hitherto untouched beauty of Paris, protest with all our strength, with all our indignation in the name of slighted French taste, against the erection … of this useless and monstrous Eiffel Tower … To bring our arguments home, imagine for a moment a giddy, ridiculous tower dominating Paris like a gigantic black smokestack, crushing under its barbaric bulk Notre Dame, the Tour Saint-Jacques, the Louvre, the Dome of les Invalides, the Arc de Triomphe, all of our humiliated monuments will disappear in this ghastly dream. And for twenty years … we shall see stretching like a blot of ink the hateful shadow of the hateful column of bolted sheet metal."

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