"An Address to the People on The Death of the Princess Charlotte" by Percy Bysshe Shelley

I. THE Princess Charlotte is dead. She no longer moves, nor thinks, nor feels. She is as inanimate as the clay with which she is about to mingle. It is a dreadful thing to know that she is a putrid corpse, who but a few days since was full of life and hope; a woman young, innocent, and beautiful, snatched from the bosom of domestic peace, and leaving that single vacancy which none can die and leave not...

With these words did poet Percy Bysshe Shelley attempt to assuage the immense national grief at the passing (on this day in 1817) of the Heiress Presumptive, Princess Charlotte Augusta of Wales; of course, the fact that he later went into a bit of political rant on behalf of the perpetrators of the Pentrich Rising is neither here nor there...

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