Poems by Hartley Coleridge :: :: University of Virginia Library

A wanton bard in heathen time,
In sensual age and sensual clime,
Hath sung that no accord can be
Of love with god-like majesty.
Far other had his sentence been
Had gentle Ovid ever seen
An English home, a Christian Queen;
For love, content in cot to dwell,
Becomes a British palace well.
And our young Queen, whose happy choice
Has made a noble land rejoice,
Is sure the monarch need not smother
The feelings of a wife and mother.
A wife and mother truly great,
In woman's duties consummate,
Such is she now. And every wife
And mother wishes joy and life
To the good Queen that dignifies

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The mother's cares, the baby's cries.
Now, every mother in the isle,
When she beholds her infant smile,
Should have a good wish and a prayer
For her the matron Queen so fair;
Who, though a Queen, has that in common
With every homely household woman,
That she has got a babe to love,
And knows there is a God above
That will the babes alike receive;
For they have all one mother Eve—
May in one well of life be laved,
And by one Jesus shall be saved.
Oh! may that God prepare their hearts,
Alike to fill their several parts.

Dec., 1840.