Liberty Leading the People

After the painting by Eugène Delacroix

Desperate rebels have stormed the Bastille,[1]
The excitement has rendered them fearless.
Liberty’s tricolour’s held high as she
Leads them onward, entirely brassiereless.
 
Has she somehow mislaid it? Or spurned it?
Is she being a prole-baiting pricktease?
Could it be she’s disdainfully burned it
Like some Women’s Lib type from the Sixties?[2]

Well I daresay her going bare-breasted
Wins more hearts than her noble composure.
Nowadays she’d risk being arrested
On a charge of indecent exposure,
 
But Parisian streets must be copless
As the clamour of fighting still rings out,
And so women are free to go topless
Or, perhaps, to get other rude things out. 

Rob Stuart

[1] Actually this work depicts the July Revolution of 1830, but sod it.
[2] Which, contrary to popular belief, never happened. Sod that too.