| |
| | “Who bears upon his baby brow the round |
| And top of sovereignty.” |
LOOK at me with thy large brown eyes, | |
| Philip my king, | |
| Round whom the enshadowing purple lies | |
| Of babyhood’s royal dignities: | |
| Lay on my neck thy tiny hand | 5 |
| With love’s invisible sceptre laden; | |
| I am thine Esther to command | |
| Till thou shalt find a queen-handmaiden, | |
| Philip my king. | |
| |
| O the day when thou goest a wooing, | 10 |
| Philip my king! | |
| When those beautiful lips are suing, | |
| And some gentle heart’s bars undoing | |
| Thou dost enter, love-crowned, and there | |
| Sittest love glorified. Rule kindly, | 15 |
| Tenderly, over thy kingdom fair | |
| For we that love, ah! we love so blindly | |
| Philip my king. | |
| |
| Up from thy sweet mouth,—unto thy brow, | |
| Philip my king! | 20 |
| The spirit that there lies sleeping now | |
| May rise like a giant and make men bow | |
| As to one heaven-chosen amongst his peers: | |
| My Saul, than thy brethren taller and fairer | |
| Let me behold thee in future years;— | 25 |
| Yet thy head needeth a circlet rarer, | |
| Philip my king. | |
| |
| —A wreath not of gold, but palm. One day, | |
| Philip my king, | |
| Thou too must tread, as we trod, a way | 30 |
| Thorny and cruel and cold and gray: | |
| Rebels within thee and foes without, | |
| Will snatch at thy crown. But march on, glorious, | |
| Martyr, yet monarch: till angels shout | |
| As thou sit’st at the feet of God victorious, | 35 |
| “Philip the king!” | |
| |
