Queen honours memory of Prince Philip with poem

The Queen has shared an elegiac poem to pay tribute to her husband, Prince Philip, on the first anniversary of his death.

The Queen has shared a poem in tribute to P\rince Philip.Picture: AFP

The Queen has shared an elegiac poem to pay tribute to her husband, Prince Philip, on the first anniversary of his death.

The verse by Poet Laureate Simon Armitage was posted on the royal family’s social media channels a year after the Duke of Edinburgh died at Windsor Castle, west of London, aged 99.

The monarch was marking the anniversary in private, after she staged a rare public appearance at a national memorial service for Philip in Westminster Abbey on March 29.

The Patriarchs: An Elegy is read by Armitage over piano music and a video montage showing photographs of Philip’s life.

His wartime generation is described as “husbands to duty”. The poem concludes: “But for now, a cold April’s closing moments / parachute slowly home, so by mid-afternoon / snow is recast as seed heads and thistledown.”

In her Christmas Day message, the Queen said there was “one familiar laugh missing” and Philip’s “mischievous, enquiring twinkle was as bright at the end as when I first set eyes on him”.

AFP