Lucretia Maria Davidson

On the Death of Queen Caroline

(Written in her twelfth year.)

Star of England! Brunswick's pride!
Thou hast suffer'd, droop'd, 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 triumph'd 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,
Oppress'd beneath a tyrant's hand,
She drank the bitter cup of woe,
And read Fate's black'ning volume through!
The last, the bitterest drop was drank,
The volume closed — and all was blank!