THE LAST DAYS OF ELIZABETH.
"Her delight is to sit in the dark, and sometimes, with shedding tears, to bewail Essex."—Contemporaneous Correspondence.
"She refused all consolation; few words she uttered, and they were all expressive of some hidden grief which she cared not to reveal. But sighs and groans were the chief vent which she gave to her despondency, and which, though they discovered her sorrows, were never able to ease or assuage them. Ten days and nights she lay upon the carpet leaning on cushions which her maids brought her," &c.—Hume.
I.
Rise from thy bloody grave,
Thou soft Medusa of the Fated Line[E]
Whose evil beauty look'd to death the brave;—
Discrownèd Queen, around whose passionate shame
Terror and Grief the palest flowers entwine,
That ever veil'd the ruins of a Name
With the sweet parasites of song divine!—
Arise, sad Ghost, arise,
And if Revenge outlive the Tomb,
Behold the Doomer brought to doom!
Lo, where thy mighty Murderess lies,
The sleepless couch—the sunless room,—
Through the darkness darkly seen
Rests the shadow of a Queen;
Ever on the lawns below
Flit the shadows to and fro,
Quick at dawn, and slow at noon,
Halving midnight with the moon:
In the palace, still and dun,
Rests that shadow on the floor;
All the changes of the sun
Move that shadow nevermore.
II.
Yet oft she turns from face to face,
A keen and wistful gaze,
As if the memory seeks to trace
The sign of some lost dwelling-place
Beloved in happier days;—
Ah, what the clue supplies
In the cold vigil of a hireling's eyes?
Ah, sad in childless age to weep alone,
Look round and find no grief reflect our own!—
O Soul, thou speedest to thy rest away,
But not upon the pinions of the dove;
When death draws nigh, how miserable they
Who have outlived all love!
As on the solemn verge of Night
Lingers a weary Moon,
Thou wanest last of every glorious light
That bathed with splendour thy majestic noon:—
The stately stars that clustering o'er the isle
Lull'd into glittering rest the subject sea;—
Gone the great Masters of Italian wile,
False to the world beside, but true to thee!—
Burleigh, the subtlest builder of thy fame,—
The serpent craft of winding Walsingham;—
They who exalted yet before thee bow'd:
And that more dazzling chivalry—the Band
That made thy Court a Faëry Land,
In which thou wert enshrined to reign alone—
The Gloriana of the Diamond Throne;—
All gone,—and left thee sad amidst the cloud.
III.
To their great sires, to whom thy youth was known,
Who from thy smile, as laurels from the sun
Drank the immortal greenness of renown,
Succeeds the cold lip-homage scantly won
From the new race whose hearts already bear
The Wise-man's offerings to th' unworthy Heir.
Watching the glass in which the sands run low,—
Hovers keen Cecil with his falcon eyes,
And musing Bacon[F] bends his marble brow.—
But deem not fondly there
To weep the fate or pour th' averting prayer
Attend those solemn spies!
Lo, at the Regal Gate
The impatient couriers wait;
To speed from hour to hour the nice account
That registers the grudged unpitied sighs
Vexing the friendless void, before
The Stuart's step shall reeling mount
Tudor's steep throne, red with his Mother's gore!
IV.