Doom'd, unhappy King! Had he Known the pangs in store for thee, Known the coarse fanatic rage That,--despite her flower-soft age, Maidenhood's first blooming fair,-- Fever-struck in the imprison'd air As rosebud on the dust-hill thrown Cast a child to die alone,-- He had shed, with his last breath, Bitterer tears than tears of death! As in her infant hour she took In her hand the pictured book Where Christ beneath the scourger bow'd, Crying 'O poor man!' aloud, And in baby tender pain Kiss'd the page, and kiss'd again, While the happy father smiled On his sweet warm-hearted child; --So now to him, in Carisbrook lone, All her tenderness has flown. Oft with a child's faithful heart She has seen him act his part; Nothing in his life so well Gracing him as when he fell; Seen him greet his bitter doom As the mercy-message Home; Seen the scaffold and the shame, The red shower that fell like flame; Till the whole heart within her died, Dying in fancy by his side. --Statue-still and statue-fair Now the low wind may lift her hair, Motionless in lip and limb; E'en the fearful mouse may skim O'er the window-sill, nor stir From the crumb at sight of her; Through the lattice unheard float Summer blackbird's evening note;-- E'en the sullen foe would bless That pale utter gentleness. --Eyes of heaven, that pass and peep, Do not question, if she sleep! She has no abiding here, She is past the starry sphere; Kneeling with the children sweet At the palm-wreathed altar's feet; --Innocents who died like thee, Heaven-ward through man's cruelty, To the love-smiles of their Lord Borne through pain and fire and sword. Elizabeth, second daughter of Charles I. and Henrietta Maria, was born on Innocents' Day, 1635. The incident accounted in Stanza iv occurred in 1637. She had been taken on a visit to Hampton Court to her mother, who wished her to be present at her own vesper-service, when Elizabeth, not yet two years old, became very restless. To quiet her a book of devotion was shown to her.' The King, when the Queen drew his attention, said, 'She begins young!' This tale is told by Mrs. Green, in her excellent _Princesses of England_, (London, 1853),--a book deserving to be better known,--on the authority of the Envoy Con. The first grief of a very happy and promising childhood may have been the loss of her sister Anne in 1640. But by 1642, the evils of the time began to press upon Princess Elizabeth; her mother's departure from England, followed by her own capture by order of the Parliament; her confinement under conditions of varying severity; and the final farewell to her father, Jan. 29, 1649.