_The deserted Palace of the late Queen Dowager Juliana Maria_[18].
Bless’d are the steps of Virtue’s queen!
Where’er she moves fresh roses bloom;
And, when she droops, kind Nature pours
Her genuine tears in gentle show’rs,
That love to dew the willow green
That over-canopies her tomb.
But, ah! no willing mourner here
Attends to tell the tale of woe:
Why is yon statue prostrate thrown?
Why has the grass green’d o’er the stone?
Why, ’gainst the spider’d casement drear,
So sullen seems the wind to blow?
How mournful was the lonely bird,
Within yon dark neglected grove!
Say, was it fancy? From its throat
Issu’d a strange and cheerless note;
’Twas not so sad as grief I heard,
Nor yet so wildly sweet as love.
In the deep gloom of yonder dell
Ambition’s blood-stain’d victims sigh’d;
While Time beholds, without a tear,
Fell Desolation hov’ring near,
Whose angry blushes seem to tell.
Here Juliana shudd’ring died!
[18] This palace, called the Mansion of Peace, is in the road and near
to Elsineur; it was the retreat of the ambitious and remorseless
Juliana Maria, the mother-in-law of Christian VII. whose intrigues and
jealousy sent Brandt and Struensee to the scaffold, and drove the
unhappy Matilda, the mother of the present King of Denmark, from her
throne, and the arms of her royal husband. Juliana died here. The
palace and grounds, parts of which are beautiful, were, when I visited
them in 1804, much neglected.