Following the death of royalist Ted Hughes in 1998, the move to 10-year appointments was bound up with efforts by Tony Blair’s Labour government to rehabilitate the royal family after the death of Princess Diana. The cultivation of images of a monarchy somehow above politics and the state was accompanied by suggestions that the Laureate might be seen as unconnected with them, or untainted by the association. Our comments have been turned off for this post. We invite you to leave your memories of Her Majesty below at this sad time. You can do so by pressing here. The humour had certainly run out. His poem for Princess Anne’s wedding to Mark Phillips in 1973 runs to a perfunctory dozen lines that end: Mr Jenkins said about his poetic and moving tribute: "I'm saddened as I was when my mother passed away. Even though the sad event is expected sooner rather than later, it can still leave a feeling of loss and emptiness." The technical accomplishment, and use of that conceit, cannot disguise that the poem is an uncritical acceptance of how the queen was represented. Armitage calls his lily/poem “a token of thanks.”

How news of the death of Elizabeth I in the 17th century was communicated in ballads and proclamations St Edward’s Crown, which will rest on the High Altar of Westminster Abbey during today’s service, is used for most modern coronations, and it is this crown which is depicted on insignias and coats of arms to denote “the Crown”. His earlier imaginary “Celebratory Ode on the Abdication of King Charles III” had wondered, “Why has it taken all this while / desceptring ‘this sceptred isle’?”, promising: Less repellent were many of the medieval kings, including Edward III who promoted the status of Parliament, and Henry V, the victor of Agincourt immortalised by Shakespeare. Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, gave a reading that took as its theme the Orwellian idea that freedom is slavery. The Queen serves Britons and Britons serve the Queen, he said, and the Queen in her turn is also the servant of the King of Kings. "Liberty is only real when it exists under authority," the archbishop said, and people are never more free than when they are under the authority of God. Welby also recalled the coronation: "pomp and ceremony on a rainy June day, wrapped in time and custom – very British."The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Geoffrey Fisher arrives at the Annexe #coronation60th #60yearsagotoday June 2, 2013 TheBritishMonarchy (@BritishMonarchy) He was also more frank than any of his predecessors about the horrors of trying to write in the public eye: “No other writing that I’ve undertaken, of any kind, has been so difficult … In every case, after I’d written these eight poems, I sent them to my agent, who sent them to newspapers, where they landed on news editors’ desks. News editors don’t think a poem is a story in and of itself, so they then get on the phone to as many people as it takes to find someone who doesn’t like the poem – then they have their story: poet laureate writes another no-good poem.”

And he that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write: for these words are true and faithful. And he said unto me, It is done. I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give unto him that is athirst of the fountain of the water of life freely. He that overcometh shall inherit all things;and I will be his God, and he shall be my son." Christina Rossetti (1830-94) was one of the Victorian era’s greatest and most influential poets. She was the younger sister (by two years) of the Pre-Raphaelite artist and poet Dante Gabriel Rossetti. She composed her first poem while still a very young girl; she dictated it to her mother. It ran simply: ‘Cecilia never went to school / Without her gladiator.’ 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.”Queen Elizabeth was not only the longest-serving monarch in British history but could even be regarded as the finest. His “ Floral Tribute” to the queen on her death is a double acrostic, the first letter of each of its lines spelling “Elizabeth” twice. Armitage has described this as a “problem to which the poem becomes a solution,” enabling him to “stretch [his] imagination” and “encode” Elizabeth’s name, connecting it with the “little signs and signals” of poetry of Elizabeth I’s age (1558-1603). That sounds a little desperate. Elizabeth II's funeral readings were almost all taken from bible passagaes, reflecting the traditional and sombre nature of the occasion. Many of the passages are well known bible readings for funerals that you may recognise. The excerpts here are smaller parts of the full verses read at the funeral. 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' Rehearsals have begun early on Tuesday morning in London for the procession of the Queen’s coffin through the capital.

KING David said, Call me Zadok the priest, and Nathan the prophet, and Benaiah the son of Jehoiada. And they came before the king. The king also said unto them, Take with you the servants of your lord, and cause Solomon my son to ride upon mine own mule, and bring him down to Gihon: And let Zadok the priest and Nathan the prophet anoint him there king over Israel: and blow ye with the trumpet, and say, God save king Solomon. Then ye shall come up after him, that he may come and sit upon my throne; for he shall be king in my stead: and I have appointed him to be ruler over Israel and Judah. And Benaiah the son of Jehoiada answered the king, and said, Amen: the Lord God of my lord the king say so too. As the Lord hath been with my lord the king, even so be he with Solomon, and make his throne greater than the throne of my lord king David. Poetic treasures in the collection include a copy of Monumentum Regale: Or a Tombe, Erected for that Incomparable and Glorious Monarch, Charles the First, a volume of elegies and poetic “sighs” and “groans” published three months after the king’s execution. Royalist poets grapple with how they can possibly commemorate an “incomparable” king. The Earl of Montrose declares he has written his poem with “blood”, “wounds” and the point of his sword. Goblin Market and Other Poems was the first collection of her poetry to be published, and it was the book that brought her to public attention. She went on to influence a range of later poets, including Gerard Manley Hopkins, Ford Madox Ford, and Elizabeth Jennings. Philip Larkin was an admirer, praising her ‘steely stoicism’. Betjeman’s poem on the same event – written three years before he succeeded Day-Lewis – was rather more successful, mainly by virtue of making no attempt to rise to the gravity of the occasion: A local man has paid a touching tribute to Queen Elizabeth II after her death was announced last night. Edward Jenkins wrote the poem to express his heartache, saying that he became as sad as he was when his mother passed away.Perhaps the most famous king of all, Henry VIII, was a paranoid dictator who spread terror at court and vandalised our cultural heritage in his fight with Rome, driven by vindictive, sexually incontinent egomania. 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. Not so long ago, the death of a monarch would have been a cue for outpourings of elegies and poetic commemorations. One might have thought the end of the second Elizabethan era would prompt something similar – but apparently not.