“Into my song of woe, Sung to a low sad air, My cruel grief I throw, For loss beyond compare; In bitter sighs and tears Go by my fairest years.

Was ever grief like mine Imposed by destiny?  Did ever lady pine, In high estate, like me, Of whom both heart and eye Within the coffin lie?

Who, in the tender spring And blossom of my youth, Taste all the sorrowing Of life’s extremest ruth, And take delight in nought Save in regretful thought.

All that was sweet and gay Is now a pain to see; The sunniness of day Is black as night to me; All that was my delight Is hidden from my sight.

My heart and eye, indeed, One face, one image know, The which this mournful weed On my sad face doth show, Dyed with the violet’s tone That is the lover’s own.

Tormented by my ill, I go from place to place, But wander as I will My woes can nought efface; My most of bad and good I find in solitude.

But wheresoe’er I stay, In meadow or in copse, Whether at break of day Or when the twilight drops, My heart goes sighing on, Desiring one that’s gone.

If sometimes to the skies My weary gaze I lift, His gently shining eyes Look from the cloudy drift, Or stooping o’er the wave I see him in the grave.

Or when my bed I seek, And-sleep begins to steal, Again I hear him speak, Again his touch I feel; In work or leisure, he Is ever near to me.

No other thing I see, However fair displayed, By which my heart will be A tributary made, Not having the perfection Of that, my lost affection.

Here make an end, my verse, Of this thy sad lament, Whose burden shall rehearse Pure love of true intent, Which separation’s stress Will never render less.”

“It was then,” says Brantorne, “that it was delightful to see her; for the whiteness of her countenance and of her veil contended together; but finally the artificial white yielded, and the snow-like pallor of her face vanquished the other.  For it was thus,” he adds, “that from the moment she became a widow, I always saw her with her pale hue, as long as I had the honour of seeing her in France, and Scotland, where she had to go in eighteen months’ time, to her very great regret, after her widowhood, to pacify her kingdom, greatly divided by religious troubles.  Alas! she had neither the wish nor the will for it, and I have often heard her say so, with a fear of this journey like death; for she preferred a hundred times to dwell in France as a dowager queen, and to content herself with Touraine and Poitou for her jointure, than to go and reign over there in her wild country; but her uncles, at least some of them, not all, advised her, and even urged her to it, and deeply repented their error.”

Mary was obedient, as we have seen, and she began her journey under such auspices that when she lost sight of land she was like to die.  Then it was that the poetry of her soul found expression in these famous lines: