June Tabor - All This Useless Beauty lyrics

It's at times such as this she'd be tempted to spit, If she wasn't so ladylike, She imagines how she might have lived back when Legends & history collide So she looks to her prince, finding since He's so charmingly slumped at her side Those days are recalled on the gallery wall, And she's waiting for pa**ion or humor to strike What shall we do, what shall we do With all this useless beauty, all this useless beauty Good Friday arrived, the sky darkened on time, Till he almost began to negotiate, And she held his head like a baby and said "It's okay if you cry" Now he wants her to dress, as if you couldn't guess He desires to impress his a**ociated But he's part ugly beast and Hellenic deceased And she finds that the mixture is hard to deny What shall we do, what shall we do With all this useless beauty, All this useless beauty She won't practice the looks from the great tragic books That were later defaced disgraced celluloid They no longer make sense, but you can bet If she isn't a sweetheart, a plaything or pet The film turns her into an unveiled threat Nonsense prevails, modesty fails, Grace and virtue turn into stupidity While the calender fades almost all barricades To a pale compromise While our rulers have feasts on the backsides of beasts They still think they're the gods of antiquity If something you missed didn't even exist, It was just an ideal, is that such a surprise? What shall we do, what shall we do With all this useless beauty, All this useless beauty?