The Death of Queen Victoria

LINES on the DEATH of

Her Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria

A weeping world now mourns our Empress Queen,
The greatest e’en our sceptre ever swayed,
Though mighty names on our long roll have been
From age to age in grandeur all arrayed;
Her simple piety and faith sincere,
Her warm-hearted sympathy and love
For all who sorrow’s weary burden bear,
Have won the reverence we seek to prove,
E’en now when woe our deepest feeling move.

Alas! Britannia sees he guardian dead,
And mournfully her mighty loss deplores
With sinking heart and meekly bended head,
She mourns her country’s awful loss and ours;
The Mother of her people lowly laid,
A groaning Universe in woe she hears
Extol the virtues of the sacred dead,
And points, but mutely, through her blinding tears,
The lesson of her rein for fully sixty years.

Her simple dignity and native grace,
Her country’s happiness her greatest care,
Her unaffected efforts still to trace
And soothe the sources, or allay despair,
Have won for her the greatest ties of all,
More durable than monument of Art
In lustre shining, never more to pall
The tenderest emotions of our heart,
Once touched by her, no more can they depart.

Not e’en the grandeur of exalted rank
Could chill the ardour of her love – so warm,
Nor drown the cry that in her bosom sank,
Voiced by the poor in moments of alarm;
A ready ear the humblest still might claim,
And of her bounty, with the noblest share;
In gratitude they learned to bliss he name,
And breathe it often in their midnight prayer,
Imploring heaven her precious life to spare.

The rustic cot to her was not unknown
In trouble’s darkest grief-corroding hour,
And frequently the honours of her throne
Were laid aside for converse with the poor,
The sinking soul has at her presence leapt
With joy, and oft rejoicing would tell
How by their cot she humbly prayed and wept,
For all beneath affliction’s awful spell,
Theirs he concern, her own woes bearing well.

Weep then ye nations, ‘tis a world’s loss
Ye mourn; but ours, by far the greater pain
To bear this cumbrous, torturing cross
Which overshadows Britain’s fair domain;
Our Empress Queen – the pure, the good, the just,
No longer with us, gone forever more,
Bear tenderly to rest her sacred dust,
And emulate the character she bore
For purity, revered from shore to shore.

23/1/1901.                                                                                                     D. WILLOX.