TO THE PRINCESS LOUISE*

ON THE DEATH OF THE PRINCESS ALICE, DECEMBER, 1878

PRINCESS but yesterday, to-day
You are to us so very near
By human sorrow, that away
All forms and titles disappear;
Your mourning glooms the winter day,

Sunshiny clear although it show,
And all its glittering white array
Seems for our grief a shroud of woe.

Our bells ring out, and in the air
So long vibrate with mournful tone

That English bells seem answering there,
The sound from far-off belfries blown;
They toll together here as there,
For yours and you and theirs and ours,
And what if now her spirit were