When Queen Victoria died
The whole of England mourned
Not for a so recently breathing old woman
A wife and a mother and a widow,
Not for a staunch upholder of Christendom,
A stickler for etiquette
A vigilant arbiter of moral values
But for a symbol.
A symbol of security and prosperity
Of “My Country Right of Wrong”
Of “ Good is Good and Bad is bad”
And “What was good enough for my father
Ought to be good enough for you”
And “ If you don’t eat your tapioca pudding
You will be locked up in your bedroom
And given nothing but bread and water
Over and over again until you come to your senses”
And are weak and pale and famished and say
Breathlessly, hopelessly and with hate in your heart
“Please Papa I would now like some tapioca pudding very
         much indeed”
A symbol too of proper elegance
Not the flaunting, bejeweled kind
That later became so popular
But a truly proper elegance,
An elegance of the spirit,
Of withdrawal from unpleasant subjects
Such as Sex and Poverty and Pit Ponies
And Little Children working in the Mines
And rude words and Divorce and Socialism
And numberless other inadmissible horrors.
When Queen Victoria died
They brought her little body from the Isle of Wight
Closed up in a black coffin, finished and done for,
With no longer any feelings and regrets and Memories of
         Albert
And no more blood pumping through the feeble veins
And no more heart beating away
As it had beaten for so many tiring years.
The coffin was placed upon a gun-carriage 
And drawn along sadly and slowly by English sailors.

But long before this the people had mourned
And walked about the streets and the Parks and Kensington
         Gardens 
Silently, solemnly and dressed in black.
Now, with the news already a few days old
The immediate shock had faded.
The business of the funeral was less poignant than the first
         realization of death,
This was a pageant, right and fitting, but adjustments were already
         beginning to be made. 
This was something we were all used to,
The slow solemnity
The measured progress to the grave.
If it hadn’t been for the gun-carriage
And the crowds and all the flags at half mast
And all the shops being closed
It might just as well have been Aunt Cordelia
Who died a few months earlier in Torquay
And had to be brought up to London by the Great Western
In a rather larger coffin
And driven slowly, oh so slowly
To the family burial ground at Esher
With all the relatives driving behind
Wearing black black black and peering furtively out of the
         carriage windows
To note for a moment that life was going on as usual.
For Aunt Cordelia was no symbol really
And her small death was of little account.
She was, after all, very old indeed
Although not quite so old as Queen Victoria
But on the other hand she didn’t have so much prestige
Except of course in her own personal mind
And that was snuffed out at the same moment as everything
         else.
Also, unlike Queen Victoria, she had few mourners
Just the family and Mrs. Stokes who had been fond of her
And Miss Esme Banks who had looked after her in Torquay
And two remote cousins
Who couldn’t rightly be classed as family
Because they were so very far removed
And only came to the cemetery because it was a sign of
         respect,
Respect, what is more, without hope
For there was little or no likelihood of their being mentioned
         in the will
But there they were all the same
Both tall and bent, in black toques with veils,
And both crying.

When Queen Victoria died
And was buried and the gun-carriage was dragged empty away
         again
The shops re-opened and so did the theatres
Although business was none too good.
But still it improved after a while
And everyone began to make plans for the Coronation
And it looked as if nothing much had happened
And perhaps nothing much had really
Except that an era, an epoch, an attitude of mind, was ended.

There would be other eras and epochs and attitudes of mind
But never quite the same.