The Parents' Review

A Monthly Magazine of Home-Training and Culture

Victoria

All hail, O Queen! O Mother, Empress, Queen,
Mighty in death, most great in sepulture!
Around thy bier stand emperors and kings;
The whole world mourns thy loss in waiting train;
The wind is woeful with the bitter wail
Of distant climes linked by thy hands in one.
O great white Mother! nations bear the torch
That lights the stairway to the larger room;
And on the shoulders of the younger world
Is laid thy royal pall. Thy children's children rise
To call thee blessed: peasant, peer, and prince
In common sorrow mourn their common Dead.

All hail, O Queen! Thou art a Queen by right
Of honour, justice, mercy, surely held.
The purple and the ermine still are thine
Where no belittling of narrow minds
Robs majesty of that strange inner robe
Which God respects. A nation's broken heart
Cries thee still Queen; a nation's trembling lips
Falter allegiance to the unstained name,
The dauntless purity of rule and life
Which set an Empire on the adamant
That mocks at time. And thou, O Mother Queen,
Wearing a nation's name upon thy heart,
Holding a nation's heart within thy hand,
Pray for us now: and may the blessed light
Which purges all our prayers of vain desires.
Which dries the tainted drop in sorrow's tears,
And burns the rebel anguish from our souls,
Lighten our hearts: for it is very dark
Without our Mother.

To the idle plough
We turn us back to till an empty field.
Farewell, O Queen! Upon the other side
Thy war-worn sons have hailed thee, crying "Peace";
For parting word thy children too cry "Peace,
Victoria Queen,"--And may God save the King!

Proofread May 2011, LNL