The subject of the poem is his love for the Lady Jane Beaufort,
daughter of the Earl of Somerset, and a princess of the blood royal of
England, of whom he became enamored in the course of his captivity.
What gives it a peculiar value, is that it may be considered a
transcript of the royal bard's true feelings, and the story of his
real loves and fortunes. It is not often that sovereigns write poetry,
or that poets deal in fact. It is gratifying to the pride of a
common man, to find a monarch thus suing, as it were, for admission
into his closet, and seeking to win his favor by administering to
his pleasures. It is a proof of the honest equality of intellectual
competition, which strips off all the trappings of factitious dignity,
brings the candidate down to a level with his fellow-men, and
obliges him to depend on his own native powers for distinction. It
is curious, too, to get at the history of a monarch's heart, and to
find the simple affections of human nature throbbing under the ermine.
But James had learnt to be a poet before he was a king: he was
schooled in adversity, and reared in the company of his own
thoughts.
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