The Queen in her Golden Coach

I am writing this during a Bank Holiday which has been decreed to celebrate the Platinum Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth the Second.  She has reigned over us now for 70 years.  I was a schoolgirl when she came to the throne, and remember the excitement, and the beautiful young Queen in her golden coach - like something out of a fairytale.

And all us schoolkids got a coronation mug and a box of coronation chocolates.  I did have the mug and the blue tin box (sans chocolates - they did not survive!) for many years.  But they have disappeared in one of our many moves.

Anyway, it seems appropriate to blog a poem I have loved since childhood. The Monarch in it is our present Queen's father of course.

Buckingham Palace  by A A Milne

They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace -
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
Alice is marrying one of the guard.
"A soldier's life is terrible hard,"
                                     Says Alice.

They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace -
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
We saw a guard in a sentry-box.
"One of the sergeants looks after their socks,"
                                     Says Alice.

They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace -
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
We looked for the King, but he never came.
"Well, God take care of him, all the same,"
                                     Says Alice.

They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace -
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
They've great big parties inside the grounds.
"I wouldn't be King for a hundred pounds,"
                                     Says Alice.

They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace -
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
A face looked out, but it wasn't the King's.
"He's much too busy a-signing things,"
                                     Says Alice.

They're changing guard at Buckingham Palace -
Christopher Robin went down with Alice.
"Do you think the King knows all about me?"
"Sure to, dear, but it's time for tea,"
                                     Says Alice.

https://allpoetry.com/Buckingham-Palace

The child in the poem is sure that the King knows and cares for him personally.   And the crowds in the Mall, for the evening concert and the Sunday pageant seemed to feel that they know the Queen. And they certainly care for her.  She - frail and fragile though she now is - did make a valiant balcony appearance, and seemed very touched and moved.

It was a small moment of unity in a fractured world.  And it made me think about my youth, and the different and vanished world of the 1950s - though both contained the Queen and her golden coach. 

But it also made me think about the time when we, the human family, will have a King over us who is able to know and care for every one of us, in a way that no human ruler can.  Isn't this what we are praying for when we say the Lord's prayer and ask for God's Kingdom to come?

"Look! A king will reign for righteousness,

And princes will rule for justice.

 And each one will be like a hiding place from the wind,

A place of concealment from the rainstorm,

Like streams of water in a waterless land,

Like the shadow of a massive crag in a parched land."

Isaiah 32:1,2