The Royal Maid

Oh, thou sweet daughter and last lingering flower
Of a great nation's loyal hope and love,
Last of a line of kings whose royal dower
Is virgin loveliness sublimed to power,
The yearning blossom of the expectant dove
On the strong eagle's spacious wings upborne ;
Or shall I call thee prophecy of spring,
In thine own virgin pureness blossoming,
Like the white May-bloom on the naked thorn ;
Nay, rather art thou like a flower

Crowning some high crazy tower,
So sweetly smiling on the rifted wall.
That, for thy sake, we would not see it fall.
Oh, royal maid, excuse the idle brain
That, knowing thee but in thy loved ideal,
Plays with thine image, and would very fain
Love and revere thee too as something real ;
Yet never having seen thee, never heard
The human accents of thine innocent thought,
Would rather think thee flower, or happy bird,
Than the dull lesson that thou hast been taught ;
Rather would deem thee bird, that glad and free
Warbles its wood-notes wild on greenwood tree,
Than tutor'd captive of a gilded cage,
Unweeting echo of a prating age.
Alas ! a prisoner born, and bred a slave,
But late awaken'd from a happy trance,
Reft of the best of what thy fortune gave.
Thy childish, aimless, wantless ignorance : —
Ah, what a hopeless task it is for thee
To govern free men that were never free.
Easy it were, I doubt not, to obey.
If to obey were duty's consummation ;
But throned servility, compell'd to sway
A shackled sceptre by the yea and nay —