Mark’d ye the mingling of the city’s throng, Each mien, each glance, with expectation bright? Prepare the pageant and the choral song, The pealing chimes, the blaze of festal light! And hark! what rumour’s gathering sound is nigh? Is it the voice of joy, that murmur deep? Away! be hush’d, ye sounds of revelry! Back to your homes, ye multitudes, to weep! Weep! for the storm hath o’er us darkly pass’d, And England’s royal flower is broken by the blast! II. Was it a dream? so sudden and so dread That awful fiat o’er our senses came! So loved, so blest, is that young spirit fled, Whose early grandeur promised years of fame? Oh! when hath life possess’d, or death destroy’d More lovely hopes, more cloudlessly that smiled? When hath the spoiler left so dark a void? For all is lost--the mother and her child! Our morning-star hath vanish’d, and the tomb Throws its deep lengthen’d shade o’er distant years to come. III. Angel of Death! did no presaging sign Announce thy coming, and thy way prepare? No warning voice, no harbinger was thine, Danger and fear seem’d past--but thou wert there! Prophetic sounds along the earthquake’s path Foretell the hour of nature’s awful throes; And the volcano, ere it burst in wrath, Sends forth some herald from its dread repose: But _thou_, dark Spirit! swift and unforeseen, Cam’st like the lightning’s flash, when heaven is all serene. IV. And she is gone!--the royal and the young, In soul commanding, and in heart benign! Who, from a race of kings and heroes sprung, Glow’d with a spirit lofty as her line. Now may the voice she loved on earth so well Breathe forth her name unheeded and in vain; Nor can those eyes on which her own would dwell Wake from that breast one sympathy again: The ardent heart, the towering mind are fled, Yet shall undying love still linger with the dead. V. Oh, many a bright existence we have seen Quench’d in the glow and fulness of its prime; And many a cherish’d flower, ere now, hath been Cropt ere its leaves were breathed upon by time. We have lost heroes in their noon of pride, Whose fields of triumph gave them but a bier; And we have wept when soaring genius died, Check’d in the glory of his mid career! But here our hopes were centred--all is o’er: All thought in this absorb’d,--she was--and is no more! VI.