From the recording The Anatomy of Melancholy

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Lyrics

The Hidden Kingdom – Emily Stewart

They put words in her mouth, and clothes on her frame
They shift her around and they hope she won’t break
Weighed down by a name and a story of old
And by diamonds, by gold, and a silken robe.

On and on the living statue stares with marble eyes,
But underneath her skirts her own little kingdom lies.

A piece of ribbon, three stray pearls,
A dried up rose and baby curls.
A small toy mouse, a lonely match,
And one dove’s egg that never hatched.

The day she was born marked the saddest hour
How cruel to be an instrument of power
To be kept from playthings and a will of her own,
While others would sell her to a foreign throne.

One day to unknown far-off lands she would be shipped away
And gathered in her dress, she’d bring her things as stowaways.

A bag of sweets, a music box,
An ivory comb, and silver rocks,
A golden apple, and a ring,
A wind-up bird that couldn’t sing. 

-

A stranger in a new home that she knows just can’t be real
A smile graces her face but yet she hides what she may feel

Like...

A little bit of innocence 
A list of names forgotten since
A mem’ry of a sunset scene
Of pink and red and gold and green

She lay on her bed wrapped in her golden hair
An empty porcelain doll, her life gone like a prayer. 
All the bells rang as they sang their adieu
The end of a chapter her life had made true. 

And when they put her in the ground they saw with their own eyes,
That all those years her dress had been a magical disguise...

The ribbons, pearls, the thoughts, the dreams
They found them all sewn in the seams
And now she smiled in peace at last
Her future no more in the past.