Thou wert more to me, Love,
More than words can tell:
All my remnant sunshine
Died in one farewell.
Midnight-mirk before me
Now my life goes by,
For the baby faces
As in vain I cry.
O the little footsteps
On the nursery floor!
Lispings light and laughter
I shall hear no more!
Eyes that gleam’d at waking
Through their silken bars;
Starlike eyes of children,
Now beyond the stars!
Where the murder’d Mary
Waits the rising sign,
They are laid in darkness,
Little lambs of mine.
Only this can comfort:
Safe from earthly harms
Christ the Saviour holds them
In His loving arms:—
Spring eternal round Him,
Roses ever fair:—
Will His mercy set them
All beside me there?
Will their Angels guide me
Through the golden gate?
—Wait a little, children!
Mother, too, must wait!
I forsook thee; Marlborough, desirous to widen the breach between Anne and William III, influenced her to write to her Father, ‘supplicating his forgiveness, and professing repentance for the part she had taken.’
Now ’tis so; Anne ‘was said to attribute the death of her children to the part she had taken in dethroning her father:’ (Lecky, History of the Eighteenth Century).
The brother; The infant son of James, known afterwards as the ‘Old Pretender,’ or as James III. He was carried as an infant from the
Palace (Dec. 1688) to Lambeth, where he was in great peril of discovery. The story is picturesquely told by Macaulay.
One blossom; The Duke of Gloucester, who grew up to eleven years, dying in July 1700. After his death Anne signed, in private letters, ‘your unfortunate’ friend.