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The New Zealand Spectator and Cook’s Strait Guardian, Wednesday, April 16, 1862

Albert

Albert

December Fourteenth, 1861.

How should the Princes die?
With red spur deep in maddening charger’s flank,
Leading the rush that cleaves the foeman’s rank,
And shouting some time-famous battle cry!

Ending a pleasure day,
Joy’s painted goblet fully drained, and out,
While wearied vassals coldly stand about,
And con new homage which they long to pay?

So have the Princes died.
Nobler and happier far the fate that falls
On him who, ’mid yon aged Castle walls,
Hears, as he goes, the plash of Thames’s tide.

Gallant, high-natured, brave,
O, had his lot been cast in warrior days,
No nobler knight had won the minstrel’s praise,
Than he, for whom the half-reared banners wave.

Or, graced with gentler powers,
The song, the pencil, and the lyre his own;
Deigned he to live fair pleasure’s thrall alone,
None had more lightly sped the laughing hours.

Better and nobler fate
His, whom we claimed but yesterday,
His, ours no more, his, round whose sacred clay,
the death-mute pages and the heralds wait.

It was too soon to die
Yet, might we count his years by triumphs won,
By wise, and bold, and Christian duties done,
It were no brief eventless history.

This was his princely thought:
With all his varied wisdom to repay
Our trust and love, which on that bridal day
the Daughter of the Isles for Dowry bought.

For that he loved our Queen,
And, for her sake, the people of her love,
Few and far distant names shall rank above
His own, where England’s cherished names are seen.

Could there be closer tie
’Twixt us, who, sorrowing, own a nation’s debt,
And her, our own dear Lady, who as yet
Must meet her sudden woe with a tearless eye:

When with a kind relief
Those eyes rain tears, O might this thought employ!
Him whom she loved we loved. We shared her joy,
And will not be denied to share her grief.