“Unthinking, idle, wild, and young,
I laughed, and danced, and talked, and sung;
And, proud of health, of freedom vain,
Dreamed not of sorrow, care, or pain;
Concluding, in those hours of glee,
That all the world was made for me.
But when the hour of trial came,
When sickness shook this trembling frame,
When folly’s gay pursuits were o’er,
And I could sing and dance no more,
It then occurred how sad ’t would be
Were this world only made for me.”
“The poor soul quitted it,” and, as Thackeray writes, “Ere yet she was dead the agonised father was in such a state that the officers about him were obliged to set watchers over him, and from November 1810 George III. ceased to reign.”
The following verses, entitled “The Charms of Silvia,” were addressed by Frederick, Prince of Wales, who cultivated a taste for literature, to his consort:—
“’Tis not the liquid brightness of those eyes,
That swim with pleasure and delight;
Nor those heavenly arches, which arise
O’er each of them to shade their light.
’T is not that hair, which plays with every wind,
And loves to wanton round thy face;
Nor straying round the forehead, now behind
Retiring with insidious grace.
’T is not that lovely range of teeth, so white,
As new shorn sheep, equal and fair;
Nor e’en that gentle smile, the heart’s delight,
With which no smile could e’er compare.
’T is not that chin so round, that neck so fine,
Those breasts that swell to meet my love,
That easy sloping waist, that form divine,
Nor aught below, nor aught above.
’T is not the living colours over each,
By nature’s finest pencil wrought,
To shame the full-blown rose, and blooming peach,
And mock the happy painter’s thought.
No—’tis that gentleness of mind, that love
So kindly answering my desire;
That grace with which you look, and speak, and move,
That thus has set my soul on fire.”