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Home  »  The World’s Best Poetry  »  Philip, My King

Bliss Carman, et al., eds. The World’s Best Poetry. 1904.

Poems of Home: I. About Children

Philip, My King

Dinah Maria Mulock Craik (1826–1887)

  • “Who bears upon his baby brow the round
  • And top of sovereignty.”
  • Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act IV. Sc. 1.

  • LOOK at me with thy large brown eyes,

    Philip, my king!

    Round whom the enshadowing purple lies

    Of babyhood’s royal dignities.

    Lay on my neck thy tiny hand

    With Love’s invisible sceptre laden;

    I am thine Esther, to command

    Till thou shalt find a queen-handmaiden,

    Philip, my king!

    O, the day when thou goest a-wooing,

    Philip, my king!

    When those beautiful lips ’gin suing,

    And, some gentle heart’s bars undoing,

    Thou dost enter, love-crowned, and there

    Sittest love-glorified!—Rule kindly,

    Tenderly over thy kingdom fair;

    For we that love, ah! we love so blindly,

    Philip, my king!

    Up from thy sweet mouth up to thy brow,

    Philip, my king!

    The spirit that there lies sleeping now

    May rise like a giant, and make men bow

    As to one Heaven-chosen among his peers.

    My Saul, than thy brethren taller and fairer,

    Let me behold thee in future years!

    Yet thy head needeth a circlet rarer,

    Philip, my king;—

    A wreath, not of gold, but palm. One day,

    Philip, my king!

    Thou too must tread, as we trod, a way

    Thorny, and cruel, and cold, and gray;

    Rebels within thee and foes without

    Will snatch at thy crown. But march on, glorious,

    Martyr, yet monarch! till angels shout,

    As thou sitt’st at the feet of God victorious,

    “Philip, the king!”