Gwynedd’s child; The Tudors intermarried with the old royal family
of North Wales, in whose pedigree occur the girl-names Gwenllian and Angharad.
Other Margaret; Sister to Edgar the Etheling, and wife to Malcolm. Her life and character are in contrast to the unhappy and unsatisfactory career of Margaret Tudor, whom I have here only treated as at once representing and uniting England, Scotland, and Wales.
LONDON BRIDGE
July 6: 1535
The midnight moaning stream
Draws down its glassy surface through the bridge
That o’er the current casts a tower’d ridge,
Dark sky-line forms fantastic as a dream;
And cresset watch-lights on the bridge-gate gleam,
Where ’neath the star-lit dome gaunt masts upbuoy
No flag of festive joy,
But blanching spectral heads;—their heads, who died
Victims to tyrant-pride,
Martyrs of Faith and Freedom in the day
Of shame and flame and brutal selfish sway.
And one in black array
Veiling her Rizpah-misery, to the gate
Comes, and with gold and moving speech sedate
Buys down the thing aloft, and bears away
Snatch’d from the withering wind and ravens’ prey:
And as a mother’s eyes, joy-soften’d, shed
Tears o’er her young child’s head,
Golden and sweet, from evil saved; so she
O’er this, sad-smilingly,
Mangled and gray, unwarm’d by human breath,
Clasping death’s relic with love passing death.
So clasping now! and so
When death clasps her in turn! e’en in the grave
Nursing the precious head she could not save,
Tho’ through each drop her life-blood yearn’d to flow
If but for him she might to scaffold go:—
And O! as from that Hall, with innocent gore
Sacred from roof to floor,
To that grim other place of blood he went—
What cry of agony rent
The twilight,—cry as of an Angel’s pain,—
My father, O my father! . . . and in vain!
Then, as on those who lie
Cast out from bliss, the days of joy come back,
And all the soul with wormwood sweetness rack,
So in that trance of dreadful ecstasy
The vision of her girlhood glinted by:—
And how the father through their garden stray’d,
And, child with children, play’d,
And teased the rabbit-hutch, and fed the dove
Before him from above
Alighting,—in his visitation sweet,
Led on by little hands, and eager feet.
Hence among those he stands,
Elect ones, ever in whose ears the word
He that offends these little ones . . . is heard,
With love and kisses smiling-out commands,
And all the tender hearts within his hands;
Seeing, in every child that goes, a flower
From Eden’s nursery bower,
A little stray from Heaven, for reverence here
Sent down, and comfort dear:
All care well paid-for by one pure caress,
And life made happy in their happiness.