MARGARET TUDOR

PROTHALAMION

1503

Love who art above us all,
Guard the treasure on her way,
Flower of England, fair and tall,
Maiden-wise and maiden-gay,
As her northward path she goes;
Daughter of the double rose.

Look with twofold grace on her
Who from twofold root has grown,
Flower of York and Lancaster,
Now to grace another throne,
Rose in Scotland’s garden set,—­
Britain’s only Margaret.

Exile-child from childhood’s bower,
Pledge and bond of Henry’s faith,
James, take home our English flower,
Guard from touch of scorn and skaith;
Bearing, in her slender hands,
Palms of peace to hostile lands.

Safe by southern smiling shires,
Many a city, many a shrine;
By the newly kindled fires
Of the black Northumbrian mine;
Border clans in ambush set;
Carry thou fair Margaret.

—­Land of heath and hill and linn,
Land of mountain-freedom wild,
She in heart to thee is kin,
Tudor’s daughter, Gwynedd’s child! 
In her lively lifeblood share
Gwenllian and Angharad fair.

East and West, from Dee to Yare,
Now in equal bonds are wed: 
Peace her new-found flower shall wear,
Rose that dapples white with red;
North and South, dissever’d yet,
Join in this fair Margaret!

Ocean round our Britain roll’d,
Sapphire ring without a flaw,
When wilt thou one realm enfold,
One in freedom, one in law? 
Will that ancient feud be sped,
Brothers’ blood by brothers shed?

—­Land with freedom’s struggle sore,
Land to whom thy children cling
With a lover’s love and more,
Take the gentle gift we bring! 
Pearl in thy crown royal set;
Scotland’s other Margaret.

Margaret Tudor, daughter to Henry VII, married in 1502 to James IV, and afterwards to Lord Angus, was thus great-grandmother on both sides to James I of England.

Gwynedd’s child; The Tudors intermarried with the old royal family of North Wales, in whose pedigree occur the girl-names Gwenllian and Angharad.

Other Margaret; Sister to Edgar the Etheling, and wife to Malcolm.  Her life and character are in contrast to the unhappy and unsatisfactory career of Margaret Tudor, whom I have here only treated as at once representing and uniting England, Scotland, and Wales.

LONDON BRIDGE

July 6:  1535

The midnight moaning stream
Draws down its glassy surface through the bridge
That o’er the current casts a tower’d ridge,
Dark sky-line forms fantastic as a dream;
And cresset watch-lights on the bridge-gate gleam,
Where ’neath the star-lit dome gaunt masts upbuoy
No flag of festive joy,
But blanching spectral heads;—­their heads, who died
Victims to tyrant-pride,
Martyrs of Faith and Freedom in the day
Of shame and flame and brutal selfish sway.