Yes, Britain mourns, as with electric touch, <br />For youth, for love, for happiness destroyed, <br />Her universal population melts <br />In grief spontaneous, and hard hearts are moved, <br />And rough unpolished natures learn to feel <br />For those they envied, leveled in the dust <br />By Fate's impartial stroke; and pulpits sound <br />With vanity and woe to earthly goods, <br />And urge and dry the tear.—Yet one there is <br />Who midst this general burst of grief remains <br />In strange tranquillity; whom not the stir <br />And long-drawn murmurs of the gathering crowd, <br />That by his very windows trail the pomp <br />Of hearse, and blazoned arms, and long array <br />Of sad funereal rites, nor the loud groans <br />And deep-felt anguish of a husband's heart, <br />Can move to mingle with this flood one tear: <br />In careless apathy, perhaps in mirth, <br />He wears the day. Yet is he near in blood, <br />The very stem on which this blossom grew, <br />And at his knees she fondled in the charm <br />And grace spontaneous which alone belongs <br />To untaught infancy:—Yet O forbear! <br />Nor deem him hard of heart; for awful, struck <br />By Heaven's severest visitation, sad, <br />Like a scathed oak amidst the forest trees, <br />Lonely he stands;—leaves bud, and shoot, and fall; <br />He holds no sympathy with living nature <br />Or time's incessant change. Then in this hour, <br />While pensive thought is busy with the woes <br />And restless change of poor humanity, <br />Think then, O think of him, and breathe one prayer, <br />From the full tide of sorrow spare one tear, <br />For him who does not weep!<br /><br />Anna Laetitia Barbauld<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/on-the-death-of-princess-charlotte/
