The Poet Laureate, Simon Armitage, has published The Patriarchs - An Elegy, in tribute to Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh.  The poem pays homage to Prince Philip's distinguished career in the Royal Navy and refers to his generation as "husbands to duty" and "great-grandfathers from birth".

Prince Philip's funeral on Saturday April 17, 2021, reflected his life and career, including his many years serving in the Royal Navy.  At the age of 21, in 1942 Philip became one of the youngest serving first lieutenants in the Royal Navy.  After the Queen ascended the throne in 1952, Philip dedicated the rest of his life to the service of the Crown.  The poem by Simon Armitage, Poet Laureate, reflects on Philip's life as Britain's longest-serving consort.

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Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh (born Prince Philip of Greece and Denmark; 10 June 1921  –  9 April 2021), was the husband of Elizabeth II.

Philip was born into the Greek and Danish royal families.  He was born in Greece, but his family was exiled from the country when he was eighteen months old.  After being educated in France, Germany and the United Kingdom, he joined the Royal Navy in 1939, aged 18.  From July 1939, he began corresponding with the thirteen-year-old Princess Elizabeth, whom he had first met in 1934.  During the Second World War he served with distinction in the Mediterranean and British Pacific fleets.

After the war, Philip was granted permission by George VI to marry Elizabeth.  Before the official announcement of their engagement in July 1947, he abandoned his Greek and Danish titles and styles, became a naturalized British subject, and adopted his maternal grandparents' surname Mountbatten.  He married Elizabeth on 20 November 1947.  Just before the wedding, he was granted the style His Royal Highness and created Duke of Edinburgh, Earl of Merioneth, and Baron Greenwich by the King.  

Philip left active military service when Elizabeth became queen in 1952, having reached the rank of commander, and was made a British prince in 1957.  Philip had four children with Elizabeth: Charles  -Prince of Wales; Anne  -Princess Royal; Prince Andrew  -Duke of York; and Prince Edward  -Earl of Wessex.  Through a British Order in Council issued in 1960, descendants of the couple not bearing royal styles and titles can use the surname Mountbatten-Windsor, which has also been used by some members of the royal family who do hold titles.

A sports enthusiast, Philip helped develop the equestrian event of carriage driving.  He was a patron, president or member of over 780 organizations, and he served as chairman of The Duke of Edinburgh's Award, a self-improvement program for young people aged 14 to 24.  He was the longest-serving consort of a reigning British monarch, and the longest-lived male member of the British royal family.  He retired from his royal duties on 2 August 2017, aged 96, having completed 22,219 solo engagements and 5,493 speeches since 1952.  Philip died on 9 April 2021, two months before his 100th birthday.

 

The Patriarchs - An Elegy

by Simon Armitage Poet Laureate

 

The weather in the window this morning

is snow, unseasonal singular flakes,

a slow winter's final shiver. On such an occasion

to presume to eulogise one man is to pipe up

for a whole generation - that crew whose survival

was always the stuff of minor miracle,

who came ashore in orange-crate coracles,

fought ingenious wars, finagled triumphs at sea

with flaming decoy boats, and side-stepped torpedoes.

Husbands to duty, they unrolled their plans

across billiard tables and vehicle bonnets,

regrouped at breakfast. What their secrets were

was everyone's guess and nobody's business.

Great-grandfathers from birth, in time they became

both inner core and outer case

in a family heirloom of nesting dolls.

Like evidence of early man their boot-prints stand

in the hardened earth of rose-beds and borders.

They were sons of a zodiac out of sync

with the solar year, but turned their minds

to the day's big science and heavy questions.

To study their hands at rest was to picture maps

showing hachured valleys and indigo streams, schemes

of old campaigns and reconnaissance missions.

Last of the great avuncular magicians

they kept their best tricks for the grand finale:

Disproving Immortality and Disappearing Entirely.

The major oaks in the wood start tuning up

and skies to come will deliver their tributes.

But for now, a cold April's closing moments

parachute slowly home, so by mid-afternoon

snow is recast as seed heads and thistledown.