Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). A Victorian Anthology, 1837–1895. 1895.
Sarah Williams 184168Queen Elizabeth
D
Is there no pity, O my land, my land?
Is it as naught to you, ye passersby?
Will ye not, for a moment, listening stand?
Truly ye have not spar’d me all my days.
Tudor, the grand old race, may pass away;
Stuart, the weak and false, awaits your praise.
Should have been here, my people, but for you;
Now he but haunts me,—oh, my son, my son!
Would that the queen had err’d, the friend been true.
Would that it had thine now on which to lean;
Faulty thou wert, they said; come back, dear faults,—
Have I not right to pardon, as a queen?
All my life long the two have torn my heart;
Now that the end has come, all things to prove,
I but repent me of my chosen part.
Come I, a broken queen, a woman old;
Smirch’d with the miry way my soul hath trod,
Weary of life as with a tale twice told.
Thou who dost know what ingrate subjects are,
Hear me, assoil, receive me, God, my God.