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How news of the death of Elizabeth I in the 17th century was communicated in ballads and proclamations
The procession will take place tomorrow afternoon, and then the monarch’s coffin will rest in Westminster until her funeral on Monday.On being appointed, he told Balcon: “If I can write some verses on the amalgamation of six Teesside boroughs, I shall feel I’ve really achieved something.” He did just that, in Hail, Teesside!: Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, gave a reading that took as its theme the Orwellian idea that freedom is slavery. The Queen serves Britons and Britons serve the Queen, he said, and the Queen in her turn is also the servant of the King of Kings. "Liberty is only real when it exists under authority," the archbishop said, and people are never more free than when they are under the authority of God. Welby also recalled the coronation: "pomp and ceremony on a rainy June day, wrapped in time and custom – very British." Former NZ poet laureate Selina Tusitala Marsh speaking at a reception at Government House in 2018. Getty Images Public poetry isn’t dead Occasional poetry is not always his best work, but Harrison’s use of classical verse and poetic history here is a striking contrast to Armitage’s liberalism. In 1999 Andrew Motion was appointed. Harrison was coruscating on Motion’s paean to Diana, noting of the tercentenary of the execution of Charles I that “the anniversary’s gone by with not a line / from toadies like Di-deifying Motion.”
Psalm 23 is one of the best known hymns, and can also be used as a reading for funerals. It has been sung at many important and historic events, including at the Queen's wedding. The version sang at the State Funeral was taken from the Scottish Psalter - the first book of common prayer to be published in Scotland. My Soul There Is a Country As laureate, Marsh preferred to write poems on occasions such as the birth of a prime ministerial baby. But the fact New Zealand even has a poet laureate in 2022 suggests there is still an appetite for public poetry, even if the days of poems on the death of a queen are numbered. An alternative strategy was to produce a paean to England’s pastoral heritage, which the monarch is supposed either to embody or to act as protective guardian for. Either way, the struggle to avoid a cheerlessly dutiful tone was almost always a losing one. John Masefield (laureate 1930-67), the poet inherited by the Queen from her grandfather, George V, was that rare thing, a genuinely popular poet (as well as novelist and dramatist), and the last of the generation of Georgian poets (he was born the same year as Edward Thomas) who represent a conservative, some would say reactionary, alternative strand in 20th-century verse to the modernism of TS Eliot and WH Auden. His first poem for the Queen, Line on the Coronation of Our Gracious Sovereign in 1953, takes the pastoral-heritage approach. It verges on doggerel: The problem is not Armitage’s talents, but the dead weight of the institutions he has embraced. The former Laureate Carol Ann Duffy’s poem on the queen’s death, “ Daughter,” failed miserably for the same reasons, It is so bad that it makes Armitage’s effort look good by comparison—at times barely intelligible, fawning, with dreadful lines like, “Soon enough they would come to know this had long been the Age of Grief; / that History was ahead of them.”
And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful. And he said unto me, It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely. He that overcometh shall inherit all things;and I will be his God, and he shall be my son." Political sensitivities excluded excellent poets. After Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s death in 1892, the post remained vacant for four years, in part because the outstanding potential successors included people like the socialist William Morris. It went eventually to the unreadably bad Alfred Austin. When Princess Elizabeth ascended the throne on February 6, 1952 after the death of her father HM King George VI, television was in its infancy, the crime rate at its lowest ever level, the theatre subject to censorship, homosexuality illegal, family breakdown rare, and national military service compulsory. On the morning of Friday 9 September 2022, here in Australia, we learnt of the passing of Queen Elizabeth II. As a child, the concept of ‘tea with the queen’ was something that so many Australians aspired to in their lifetime. Yet somehow, she made us feel as if we were all part of her family and that she would be there to manage our trouble and strife. So much has been said about her service, loyalty, dignity, grace, humour and steadfastness, qualities that feel as if they come from another time and place. Not so long ago, the death of a monarch would have been a cue for outpourings of elegies and poetic commemorations. One might have thought the end of the second Elizabethan era would prompt something similar – but apparently not.
Read in full the Coronation Oath made by The Queen at the start of the ceremony: http://t.co/tXszVpOt5x #coronation60th June 2, 2013 Westminster Abbey (@wabbey) The Oath: The Sovereign takes an oath, swearing to govern faithfully with justice and mercy #60yearsagotoday #coronation60th June 2, 2013 TheBritishMonarchy (@BritishMonarchy) It is an entirely new conception built on the highest qualities of the spirit of man: friendship, loyalty and the desire for freedom and peace. To that new conception of an equal partnership, I shall give myself heart and soul every day of my life,” she said in her Coronation year. Queen Elizabeth was not only the longest-serving monarch in British history but could even be regarded as the finest. The Queen arrives at the Annexe looking rather nervous #60yearsagotoday #coronation60th June 2, 2013 Westminster Abbey (@wabbey)
The Queen has died – what happens now? Funeral and mourning plans in full
St Edward’s Crown, which will rest on the High Altar of Westminster Abbey during today’s service, is used for most modern coronations, and it is this crown which is depicted on insignias and coats of arms to denote “the Crown”. Published in 1911, this patriotic poem may be unfashionable by today’s standards, but the poem shows how Queen Victoria’s importance and legacy was still a major part of Britain’s identity even a decade after her death and almost 75 years after she’d first come to the throne. He was also more frank than any of his predecessors about the horrors of trying to write in the public eye: “No other writing that I’ve undertaken, of any kind, has been so difficult … In every case, after I’d written these eight poems, I sent them to my agent, who sent them to newspapers, where they landed on news editors’ desks. News editors don’t think a poem is a story in and of itself, so they then get on the phone to as many people as it takes to find someone who doesn’t like the poem – then they have their story: poet laureate writes another no-good poem.” We are grieving now because our departed Queen was so loved, perhaps more than any of her predecessors. In our age of rumbustious democracy, where deference has evaporated, the outpouring of sadness has been extraordinary and is a shining tribute to her character.
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