1. The Young Queen
This awful responsibility is imposed upon me so suddenly, and at so
early a period of my life, that I should feel myself utterly
oppressed by the burden, were I not sustained by the hope that
Divine Providence, which has called me to this work, will give me
strength for the performance of it.
The Queen’s Declaration in
Council a
The shroud is yet unspread
To wrap our crownëd dead;
His soul hath scarcely hearkened for the thrilling word of doom;
And Death that makes serene
Ev’n brows where crowns have been,
Hath scarcely time to meeten
6 his, for
silence of the tomb.
St. Paul’s
7 king-dirging note
The city’s heart hath smote—
The city’s heart is struck with thought more solemn than the tone!
A shadowre solemn than the tone! sweeps apace
Before the nation’s face,
Confusing in a shapeless blot the sepulchre and throne.
The palace sounds with wail—
The courtly dames are pale—
A widow o’er the purple
15 bows, and weeps its splendour dim:
And we who hold the boon,
16
A king for freedom won,
Do feel eternity rise up between our thanks and him.
And while all things express
All glory’s nothingness,
A royal maiden treadeth firm where that departed trod!
The deathly scented crown
Weighs her shining ringlets down;
But calm she lifts her trusting face, and calleth upon God.
Her thoughts are deep within her:
No outward pageants win her
From memories that in her soul are rolling wave on wave—
Her palace walls enring
The dust that was a king—
And very cold beneath her feet, she feels her father’s grave
4
And One
31, as fair as she,
Can scarce forgotten be,—
Who clasped a little infant dead, for all a kingdom’s worth!
The mournëd, blessëd One,
Who views Jehovah’s throne,
Aye
36 smiling to the angels, that
she lost a throne on earth.
Perhaps our youthful Queen
Remembers what has been—
Her childhood’s rest by loving heart, and sport on grassy sod—
Alas! can others wear
A mother’s heart for her?
But calm she lifts her trusting face, and calleth upon God
Yea! Call on God, thou maiden
Of spirit nobly laden,
And leave such happy days behind, for happy-making years!
A nation looks to thee
For stedfast
47 sympathy:
Make room within thy bright clear eyes, for all its gathered
tears.
And so the grateful isles
Shall give thee back their smiles,
And as thy mother joys in thee, in them shalt thou rejoice;
Rejoice to meekly bow
A somewhat paler brow,
While the King of kings shall bless thee by the British people’s
voice!
2. Note on the text
At the death of her uncle King William IV on June 20, 1837,
Princess Victoria (1819-1901) became Queen of England at
age eighteen. As the daughter of the fourth son of King George
III, in early life she would not have seemed likely to succeed,
but the lack of legitimate heirs to her uncles elevated her to the throne. The
girlish monarch quickly captured the imaginations and sympathy of her subjects,
as reports of her behavior following King William’s death emphasized both her
youthful vulnerability and her great poise and dignity. EBB, despite her avowed
“republicanism,” found the young monarch “very interesting” and appealing
because of her “very tender heart” (BC 3:261). This poem appeared in the Athenæum on 1 July 1837
less than two weeks after Victoria became monarch, during widespread public
euphoria over her accession. Although EBB included it in her 1838 collection
with another poem on the young queen, “Victoria’s Tears," a1 she did
not reprint either in her later collected works. It remains unclear whether she
judged both poems inferior or too topical in interest, or whether her attitudes
toward the queen had changed so that the poems no longer expressed her
sentiments. Criticism: Harrison (1990); for analysis in relation to cultural
representations of Queen Victoria, see also Houston and Munich a2. For a text with
variants and more extended annotation, see The Works of
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Vol. 5, General Editor, Sandra Donaldson
(London: Pickering and Chatto).
Notes
a.
The Queen's Declaration in Council The
epigraph is from the opening sentence of the Queen’s first
speech to members of her Privy Council on the morning following
William IV’s death, her first official address.
↵
6.
meeten make suitable or proper.
↵
7.
St. Paul's The Anglican cathedral
(completed in 1710) that dominates the center of London tolled its bell
to signal William’s passing.
↵
15.
purple a color traditionally associated with
royalty, and with death as the color of the pall, or cloth covering the
body or coffin.
↵
16.
boon benefit, blessing.
↵
4.
grave Victoria’s father, Edward, Duke of Kent
(1767-1820), would have succeeded to the throne before her, but he died
when she was eight months old.
↵
31.
One Princess Charlotte, the daughter of George
IV, who would have succeeded him to the throne, died in childbirth in
1817, when her father was still Prince Regent. She was widely beloved
and mourned.
↵
47.
stedfast steadfast.
↵
a1.
Victoria's Tears EBB also wrote a poem on the
occasion of Victoria’s marriage to Prince Albert, “Crowned and Wedded”
(1840). For EBB’s mixed reactions to Queen Victoria, see, e.g., BC 3:291;
4:58, 120, 171, 200; 5:193, 313-14, 315, 321, 353-54; 6:25.
↵
a2.
Munich Gail Turley Houston, Royalties: The Queen and
Victorian Writers (Charlottesville: UP of Virginia, 1999); Adrienne Munich,
Queen Victoria’s Secrets (NY: Columbia UP, 1996).
↵
