| Edmund Clarence Stedman, ed. (1833–1908). A Victorian Anthology, 1837–1895. 1895. |
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| Queen Elizabeth |
| | | Sarah Williams (1841–68) |
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| DYING, and loth to die, and long’d to die; | |
| Is there no pity, O my land, my land? | |
| Is it as naught to you, ye passersby? | |
| Will ye not, for a moment, listening stand? | |
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| Who shall come after me, is what ye pray; | 5 |
| Truly ye have not spar’d me all my days. | |
| Tudor, the grand old race, may pass away; | |
| Stuart, the weak and false, awaits your praise. | |
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| Essex, my murder’d darling, tender one, | |
| Should have been here, my people, but for you; | 10 |
| Now he but haunts me,—oh, my son, my son! | |
| Would that the queen had err’d, the friend been true. | |
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| Dudley, my one one love, my spirit halts; | |
| Would that it had thine now on which to lean; | |
| Faulty thou wert, they said; come back, dear faults,— | 15 |
| Have I not right to pardon, as a queen? | |
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| Truly, ’t is hard to rule, ’t is sore to love, | |
| All my life long the two have torn my heart; | |
| Now that the end has come, all things to prove, | |
| I but repent me of my chosen part. | 20 |
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| Now to my mother’s God, who dwells afar, | |
| Come I, a broken queen, a woman old; | |
| Smirch’d with the miry way my soul hath trod, | |
| Weary of life as with a tale twice told. | |
| Thou who dost know what ingrate subjects are, | 25 |
| Hear me, assoil, receive me, God, my God. | |
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