Oft I see the brother,
   Baby born to woe,
Crouching by the church-wall
   From the bloodhound-foe. 
Evil crown’d of evil,
   Heritage of strife! 
Mine, an heirless sceptre: 
   His, an exile life!

—­O my vanish’d darlings,
   From the cradle torn! 
Dewdrop lives, that never
   Saw their second morn! 
Buds that fell untimely,—­
   Till one blossom grew;
As I watch’d its beauty,
   Fading whilst it blew.

Thou wert more to me, Love,
   More than words can tell: 
All my remnant sunshine
   Died in one farewell. 
Midnight-mirk before me
   Now my life goes by,
For the baby faces
   As in vain I cry.

O the little footsteps
   On the nursery floor! 
Lispings light and laughter
   I shall hear no more! 
Eyes that gleam’d at waking
   Through their silken bars;
Starlike eyes of children,
   Now beyond the stars!

Where the murder’d Mary
   Waits the rising sign,
They are laid in darkness,
   Little lambs of mine. 
Only this can comfort: 
   Safe from earthly harms
Christ the Saviour holds them
   In His loving arms:—­

Spring eternal round Him,
   Roses ever fair:—­
Will His mercy set them
   All beside me there? 
Will their Angels guide me
   Through the golden gate? 
—­Wait a little, children! 
   Mother, too, must wait!

I forsook thee; Marlborough, desirous to widen the breach between Anne and William III, influenced her to write to her Father, ’supplicating his forgiveness, and professing repentance for the part she had taken.’

Now ’tis so; Anne ’was said to attribute the death of her children to the part she had taken in dethroning her father:’  (Lecky, History of the Eighteenth Century).

The brother; The infant son of James, known afterwards as the ’Old Pretender,’ or as James III.  He was carried as an infant from the Palace (Dec. 1688) to Lambeth, where he was in great peril of discovery.  The story is picturesquely told by Macaulay.

One blossom; The Duke of Gloucester, who grew up to eleven years, dying in July 1700.  After his death Anne signed, in private letters, ’your unfortunate’ friend.

Anne’s character, says the candid Lecky, ’though somewhat peevish and very obstinate, was pure, generous, simple, and affectionate; and she displayed, under bereavements far more numerous than fall to the share of most, a touching piety that endeared her to her people.’

Where the murder’d Mary; ‘Above and around, in every direction,’ says Dean Stanley, describing the vault beneath the monument of Mary of Scotland in Henry the Seventh’s Chapel,—­’crushing by the accumulated weight of their small coffins the receptacles of the illustrious dust beneath, lie the eighteen children of Queen Anne, dying in infancy or stillborn, ending with William Duke of Gloucester, the last hope of the race:’  (Historical Memorials of Westminster Abbey, ch. iii).