Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). A Victorian Anthology, 1837–1895. 1895.

Dinah Maria Mulock Craik 1826–87

Philip, My King

Craik-Di

LOOK at me with thy large brown eyes,

Philip, my king.

Round whom the enshadowing purple lies

Of babyhood’s royal dignities.

Lay on my neck thy tiny hand

With love’s invisible sceptre laden;

I am thine Esther to command

Till thou shalt find a queen-handmaiden,

Philip, my king.

Oh the day when thou goest a wooing,

Philip, my king.

When some beautiful lips ’gin suing,

And some gentle heart’s bars undoing

Thou dost enter, love-crown’d, and there

Sittest love-glorified. Rule kindly,

Tenderly, over thy kingdom fair,

For we that love, ah! we love so blindly,

Philip, my king.

Up from thy sweet mouth,—up to thy brow,

Philip, my king.

The spirit that here lies sleeping now

May rise like a giant and make men bow

As to one heaven-chosen among his peers.

My Saul, than thy brethren taller and fairer,

Let me behold thee in future years!

Yet thy head needeth a circlet rarer,

Philip, my king.

—A wreath not of gold, but palm. One day,

Philip, my king.

Thou too must tread, as we trod, a way

Thorny and cruel and cold and gray:

Rebels within thee, and foes without,

Will snatch at thy crown. But march on, glorious,

Martyr, yet monarch! till angels shout,

As thou sit’st at the feet of God victorious,

“Philip, the king!”