Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry.
Volume I. Of Home: of Friendship. 1904. | | | | Poems of Home: I. About Children | | Philip, My King | | Dinah Maria Mulock Craik (1826–1887) |
| | | | “Who bears upon his baby brow the round |
| And top of sovereignty.” |
| Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act IV. Sc. 1. |
LOOK 1 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 ’gin 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 up to 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 among 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 sitt’st at the feet of God victorious, | 35 |
| “Philip, the king!” | |
|
|
|
