Set up and electrotyped. Published May, 1893. Reprinted February,
1894. New edition in six volumes, September, 1896. New edition,
October, 1899; September, 1903.

New edition, with the author's notes, April, 1908.

IDYLLS OF THE KING.

DEDICATION.

THESE to His Memory-since he held them dear,
Perchance as finding there unconsciously
Some image of himself-I dedicate,

I dedicate, I consecrate with tears

These Idylls.

And indeed He seems to me

Scarce other than my king's ideal knight,
'Who reverenced his conscience as his king;
Whose glory was, redressing human wrong;
Who spake no slander, no, nor listen'd to it;
Who loved one only and who clave to her—'
Her-over-all whose realms to their last isle,
Commingled with the gloom of imminent war,
The shadow of His loss drew like eclipse,

Darkening the world. We have lost him he is gone :
We know him now: all narrow jealousies

Are silent; and we see him as he moved,
How modest, kindly, all-accomplish'd, wise,
With what sublime repression of himself,
And in what limits, and how tenderly;
Not swaying to this faction or to that;
Not making his high place the lawless perch
Of wing'd ambitions, nor a vantage-ground
For pleasure; but thro' all this tract of years
Wearing the white flower of a blameless life,
Before a thousand peering littlenesses,
In that fierce light which beats upon a throne
And blackens every blot for where is he,
Who dares foreshadow for an only son

A lovelier life, a more unstain'd, than his?
Or how should England dreaming of his sons
Hope more for these than some inheritance
Of such a life, a heart, a mind as thine,
Thou noble Father of her Kings to be,
Laborious for her people and her poor-
Voice in the rich dawn of an ampler day—
Far-sighted summoner of War and Waste
To fruitful strifes and rivalries of peace-
Sweet nature gilded by the gracious gleam
Of letters, dear to Science, dear to Art,
Dear to thy land and ours, a Prince indeed,
Beyond all titles, and a household name,
Hereafter, thro' all times, Albert the Good.