ON THE DEATH OF QUEEN CAROLINE.
Star of England! Brunswick's pride!
Thou hast suffered, drooped, and died!
Adversity, with piercing eye,
Bade all her arrows round thee fly;
She marked thee from thy cradle-bed,
And plaited thorns around thy head!—
As the moon, whom sable clouds
Now brightly shows—now darkly shrouds—
So envy, with a serpent's eye,
And slander's tongue of blackest dye,
On thy pure name aspersions cast,
And triumphed o'er thy fame at last!
But each dark tale of guilt and shame
Shall darker fly to whence it came!
A stranger in a foreign land,
Oppressed beneath a tyrant's hand,
She drank the bitter cup of woe,
And read Fate's blackening volume through!
The last, the bitterest drop was drank,
The volume closed—and all was blank!
Thou hast suffered, drooped, and died!
Adversity, with piercing eye,
Bade all her arrows round thee fly;
She marked thee from thy cradle-bed,
And plaited thorns around thy head!—
As the moon, whom sable clouds
Now brightly shows—now darkly shrouds—
So envy, with a serpent's eye,
And slander's tongue of blackest dye,
On thy pure name aspersions cast,
And triumphed o'er thy fame at last!
But each dark tale of guilt and shame
Shall darker fly to whence it came!
A stranger in a foreign land,
Oppressed beneath a tyrant's hand,
She drank the bitter cup of woe,
And read Fate's blackening volume through!
The last, the bitterest drop was drank,
The volume closed—and all was blank!