C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.
Philip, My King
By Dinah Maria Mulock Craik (1826–1887)
L
Philip, my King!
For round thee the purple shadow lies
Of babyhood’s regal dignities.
Lay on my neck thy tiny hand,
With love’s invisible sceptre laden;
I am thine Esther to command,
Till thou shalt find thy queen-handmaiden,
Philip, my King!
Philip, my King!
When those beautiful lips are suing,
And some gentle heart’s bars undoing,
Thou dost enter, love-crowned, and there
Sittest all glorified!—Rule kindly,
Tenderly, over thy kingdom fair,
For we that love, ah, we love so blindly,
Philip, my King!
Philip, my King:
Ay, there lies the spirit, all sleeping now,
That may rise like a giant, and make men bow
As to one God—throned amidst his peers.
My Saul, than thy brethren higher and fairer,
Let me behold thee in coming years!
Yet thy head needeth a circlet rarer,
Philip, my King!
Philip, my King,
Thou too must tread, as we tread, a way
Thorny, and bitter, and cold, and gray:
Rebels within thee and foes without
Will snatch at thy crown. But go on, glorious,
Martyr, yet monarch! till angels shout,
As thou sittest at the feet of God victorious,—
“Philip, the King!”