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The Lady Jane Grey Internet Museum Poetry

Lady Jane Grey

Author: Emily Cozens
Source: "Bertha ... The Miser's Dream; and Historical and Other Poems"
Year: 1880
Found here.

IN Broadgate's peaceful shades there lived a maid of royal race;
In her were talents rare combined with beauty's highest grace;
And, over all, religion ruled with bright and lasting reign,
The Reformation's fairest Rose, the peerless Lady Jane.
She lived a life of innocence, Of study, and of prayer;
The sacred Book of books received her highest thought and care;
She loved her mighty intellect in ancient lore to train,
And shrank from frivolous pursuits, from pleasures light and vain.
The proud Duke of Northumberland espoused her to his son,
And quickly was her loving heart by Guildford Dudley won;
Right well contented had she been with pure domestic life:
The ambitious views of others drew her forward into strife.

Alas ! for her, and England too, there came a fatal day
When Edward, her young cousin, passed from crown and life away;
And, by Northumberland's desire, a will he had prepared
In which herself, the Lady Jane, was rightful heir declared.

Her parents urged her earnestly to let herself be crowned;
They bent the knee before their child in reverence profound;
She pleaded that she had no right, she had no wish to reign;
Her husband joined in their request, her conscience spoke in vain.

They placed the crown upon her head, they cried "God save Queen Jane!"
The people echoed not the shouts, no acclamations came;
Portentous silence reigned around, as towards the Tower they rowed,
Where, for a few brief days in State, the youthful Queen abode.

Full soon the dreaded tidings came that Mary was proclaimed,
That England's rightful sovereign o'er all the kingdom reigned;
Without regret Queen Jane resigned the unwelcome, fatal crown:
The power she never had desired she cheerfully laid down.

The great Duke of Northumberland was to the scaffold led:
At that time Suffolk and his child escaped a fate so dread:
But when, a few months afterwards, Wyatt's insurrection came,
It fatal proved to Suffolk, and his daughter Lady Jane.

The Queen's confessor vainly tried her steadfast faith to move;
She answered all his arguments, his doctrines did disprove.
A pardon Mary offered, to be reconciled to Rome,
But faithful to the Church reformed, Jane clung to that alone.

She owned that, through obedience and weakness, she had erred:
Her lord's and parents' wishes she had to her own preferred;
The justice of her early death she tried not to deny,
But calm, devout, and resolute, prepared herself to die.

Her youthful lord, before his wife, received the fatal blow,
And then the Lady Jane's fair head, the fatal axe laid low;
That gifted mind, that pure young life, from earth for ever fled:
At seventeen the lovely form was numbered with the dead.
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Life: 1 - 1a - 1a2 - 1a3 -1b : Jane & Ascham - 1c - 1d - 1e: Jane & Guildford - 2 - 3 - 3a - 4: Jane & Prince & the Pauper - 5
Reign: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 | Tower: 1 - 2 | Execution: 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 | Miscellany: 1 - 2 - Uneekdolldesign's Lady Jane Grey Dolls
Lee Porritt's Jane Artwork | Jane Comic | Movies: "Lady Jane" - "Tudor Rose"
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