What results, among some good lines, are banalities driven by the official message he is conveying: “A promise made and kept for life – that was your gift,” and, “The country loaded its whole self into your slender hands, / Hands that can rest, now, relieved of a century’s weight.” This is embarrassing.

During his relatively brief tenure, much of it marked by serious illness, Day-Lewis produced poems for the Old Vic’s 150th anniversary, Oxfam’s 25th, for National Library Week, to encourage environmental awareness, for Beethoven’s bicentenary – and just one for a royal event: the poem For the Investiture of the Prince of Wales, published in the Guardian on 1 July 1969. This vast body of public poetry about previous monarchs is in sharp contrast to the response to Queen Elizabeth II’s death. Even in the United Kingdom, the current poet laureate, Simon Armitage, seems to have struggled. The form of his poem “Floral Tribute”, an acrostic on the name “ Elizabeth”, seems archaic at best and banal at worst. The words to this hymn were originally written in Latin at some point in the 6th or 7th Century. They were translated and put to music in 1843 by J M Neale. The melody for the hymn was borrowed from the Alleluyas in Henry Purcell's 'O God, Thou art my God' Most of his “laureate poems” show similar, healthy impulses. Armitage has written frequently of science and nature, produced pieces for the bicentenary of John Keats’s death, and inaugurated a new orchestral rehearsal venue.We are grieving now because our departed Queen was so loved, perhaps more than any of her predecessors. In our age of rumbustious democracy, where deference has evaporated, the outpouring of sadness has been extraordinary and is a shining tribute to her character. It is an entirely new conception built on the highest qualities of the spirit of man: friendship, loyalty and the desire for freedom and peace. To that new conception of an equal partnership, I shall give myself heart and soul every day of my life,” she said in her Coronation year.

As laureate, Marsh preferred to write poems on occasions such as the birth of a prime ministerial baby. But the fact New Zealand even has a poet laureate in 2022 suggests there is still an appetite for public poetry, even if the days of poems on the death of a queen are numbered.

We continue to celebrate Queen Elizabeth II with poems written by you, our readers. These were first published in our 2012 Diamond Jubilee Special. How news of the death of Elizabeth I in the 17th century was communicated in ballads and proclamations Psalm 23 is one of the best known hymns, and can also be used as a reading for funerals. It has been sung at many important and historic events, including at the Queen's wedding. The version sang at the State Funeral was taken from the Scottish Psalter - the first book of common prayer to be published in Scotland. My Soul There Is a Country

Perhaps her strongest rival for first place in the pantheon of greatness is her namesake Elizabeth I, who presided over the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588, brought stability to England after a period of religious conflict, sacrificed her own romantic happiness to the needs of her nation, and enabled the arts, particularly the theatre, to flourish. She had both wisdom and vision. But the conformism of Armitage’s royal poems strips away their artistic merit. His first royal poem followed Prince Philip’s death. “ The Patriarchs – An Elegy” portrayed a noble self-sacrifice alongside his spouse:

Queen's first photo to the last - A life of duty

Based on a German Chorale melody, ‘Meine Hoffnung’ by Joachim Neander, the English version of this hymn was set to music in 1930 by Herbert Howells. The words were translated earlier, in 1899, by future Poet-Laureate Robert Bridges. The hymn speaks of a faith and service that is unchanging and unwavering - an appropriate message for the occasion. Tennyson would write numerous poems based on Arthurian legend, culminating in his vast blank-verse epic Idylls of the King, although his earlier, shorter (though still substantial) poem ‘Morte d’Arthur’ offers a great way into Tennyson’s Arthurian world and is a good point of departure for an analysis of Tennyson’s engagement with Arthuriana. Of the lethal doctrinal disputes that plagued the 16th century, she said: “There is Jesus Christ; the rest is a dispute over trifles.” She loathed the concepts of thought crimes and purity tests, saying that she did not want to make “windows on men’s souls.” The crown is so heavy — weighing in at 2.2kg of solid gold — that it was worn only briefly by the Queen during the coronation service, being swapped for the lighter Imperial State Crown - the more familiar crown which the Queen wears habitually to state openings of parliament. Sixty years ago, it was placed on her head by the then Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Geoffrey Fisher. “By a glance she indicated it was steady,” he later recalled. Masefield published a huge amount of laureate verse, on the deaths of Winston Churchill, TS Eliot and John F Kennedy (“All generous hearts lament the leader killed, / The young chief with the smile, the radiant face”), on AE Housman’s centenary and the birth of Prince Charles (a sonorous little quatrain, full of abstractions about service and destiny). Despite his enormous success as a writer, he retained a modesty that, according to one possibly apocryphal story, led him to accompany his poems with an SAE when sending them to the Times, in case they should be deemed unsuitable for publication. If I can write some verses on the amalgamation of six Teesside boroughs, I shall feel I’ve really achieved something Cecil Day-Lewis

The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death. For this corruptible must put on incorruption, and this mortal must put on immortality. So when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, and this mortal shall have put on immortality, then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death is swallowed up in victory. O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory? The sting of death is sin; and the strength of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, which giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. Therefore, my beloved brethren, be ye steadfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord, forasmuch as ye know that your labour is not in vain in the Lord." Bring us, O Lord God, at our last awakening into the house and gate of heaven, to enter into that gate and dwell in that house, where there shall be no darkness nor dazzling, but one equal light; no noise nor silence, but one equal music; no fears nor hopes, but one equal possession; no ends nor beginnings, but one equal eternity; in the habitation of thy glory and dominion, world without end. Amen."Final preparations for events in the capital following the death of the Queen are taking place before she is flown from Edinburgh this evening. And there are close connections nearby to these elegies on King Charles I. Melbourne’s State Library Victoria holds the John Emmerson collection of over 5,000 early modern English books, among which poems, pamphlets and other publications on the death of Charles I feature prominently.