“O let all these declare it, Let miles of shouting swear it, In all the years of yore, Unparalleled before! And thou, most welcome Wand'rer Across the Northern Water, Our England's ALEXANDRA, Our dear adopted daughter-- Lay to thine heart, conned o'er and o'er, In future years remembered well, The magic fervor of this spell That shakes the land from shore to shore, And makes all hearts and eyes brim o'er; Our hundred thousand welcomes, Our fifty million welcomes, And a hundred million more!”
Here we have, besides the most liberal previous subscription, a further call on the public for no less than one hundred and fifty million one hundred thousand welcomes for her Royal Highness. How much is this per head for all of us in the three kingdoms? Not above five welcomes apiece, and I am sure many of us have given more than five hurrahs to the fair young Princess.
Each man sings according to his voice, and gives in proportion to his means. The guns at Sheerness “from their adamantine lips” (which had spoken in quarrelsome old times a very different language,) roared a hundred thundering welcomes to the fair Dane. The maidens of England strewed roses before her feet at Gravesend when she landed. Mr. Tupper, with the million and odd welcomes, may be compared to the thundering fleet; Mr. Chorley's song, to the flowerets scattered on her Royal Highness's happy and carpeted path:--
“Blessings on that fair face! Safe on the shore Of her home-dwelling place, Stranger no more. Love, from her household shrine, Keep sorrow far! May for her hawthorn twine, June bring sweet eglantine, Autumn, the golden vine, Dear Northern Star!”
Hawthorn for May, eglantine for June, and in autumn a little tass of the golden vine for our Northern Star. I am sure no one will grudge the Princess these simple enjoyments, and of the produce of the last-named pleasing plant, I wonder how many bumpers were drunk to her health on the happy day of her bridal? As for the Laureate's verses, I would respectfully liken his Highness to a giant showing a beacon torch on “a windy headland.” His flaring torch is a pine-tree, to be sure, which nobody can wield but himself. He waves it: and four times in the midnight he shouts mightily, “Alexandra!” and the Pontic pine is whirled into the ocean and Enceladus goes home.