James and Mary Ford, eds. Every Day in the Year. 1902.
November 5Death of the Princess Charlotte
By Lord Byron (17881824)
H
A long low distant murmur of dread sound,
Such as arises when a nation bleeds
With some deep and immedicable wound;
Through storm and darkness yawns the rending ground,
The gulf is thick with phantoms, but the chief
Seems royal still, though with her head discrown’d,
And pale, but lovely, with maternal grief
She clasps a babe, to whom her breast yields no relief.
Fond hope of many nations, art thou dead?
Could not the grave forget thee, and lay low
Some less majestic, less beloved head?
In the sad midnight, while thy heart still bled,
The mother of a moment, o’er thy boy,
Death hush’d that pang for ever: with thee fled
The present happiness and promised joy
Which fill’d the imperial isles so full it seem’d to cloy.
O thou that wert so happy, so adored!
Those who weep not for kings shall weep for thee,
And Freedom’s heart, grown heavy, cease to hoard,
Her many griefs for O
Her orisons for thee, and o’er thy head
Beheld her Iris.—Thou, too, lonely lord,
And desolate consort—vainly wert thou wed!
The husband of a year! the father of the dead!
Thy bridal’s fruit is ashes: in the dust
The fair-hair’d Daughter of the Isles is laid,
The love of millions! How we did entrust
Futurity to her! and, though it must
Darken above our bones, yet fondly deem’d
Our children should obey her child, and bless’d
Her and her hoped-for seed, whose promise seem’d
Like star to shepherds’ eyes:—’twas but a meteor beam’d.
The fickle reek of popular breath, the tongue
Of hollow counsel, the false oracle,
Which from the birth of monarchy hath rung
Its knell in princely ears, till the o’erstung
Nations have arm’d in madness, the strange fate
Which tumbles mightiest sovereigns, and hath flung
Against their blind omnipotence a weight
Within the opposing scale, which crushes soon or late,—
Our hearts deny it: and so young, so fair,
Good without effort, great without a foe;
But now a bride and mother—and now there!
How many ties did that stern moment tear!
From thy Sire’s to his humblest subject’s breast
Is link’d the electric chain of that despair,
Whose shock was as an earthquake’s, and opprest
The land which loved thee, so that none could love thee best.