The Age from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia • Page 1

Jtf-: 1 I I 1 1 SUNDAY AGE 0 In the autumn sun, two boys take a last walk with Mum Goodni Prince U. if In her shadow: From left to right: Prince Charles, Prince Harry, Earl Spencer, Prince William and the Duke of Edinburgh watch as Princess Diana's coffin is carried into Westminster Abbey. ByLes Carlyon the path of the cortege. Mourners holding single candles and looking lost and pallid even though a soft sun was dappling the autumn leaves. No triumphalism.

No military bands, no dirges, no drums. Just silence and sadness, bar the sound of hoofs. And that bell. Scenes never seen before at Westrninster Abbey. Luciano Pavarotti, his face a wreath of agony, arriving to applause.

Showbiz and royalty joined in grief. Applause from the mourners. SO much pomp. A coffin on a gun carriage topped with lilies and a card that said Postilion riders in yellow braid. Guardsmen in scarlet.

A tenor bell tolling half muffled. And, for once, no one anywhere in the world had to ask for whom the bell tolled. So much pomp and such awful circumstance the funeral of a Princess who also happened to be the first woman in the world, now laid upon the altar, the hurting badly, finding just about the perfect words under the vaulted ceilings of the Abbey. Now she's gone, the English Rose, and we'll never truly know who she was. There were so many sides to her.

But we'll know this: she had a gift, and it was probably the gift of love. And this too: she was, for reasons that are both mysterious and obvious, the first woman in the world. Now she's gone. To a grave straight from Arthurian legend. To a little island, misty and green, rising out of a lake.

Now she's gone, the English Rose. Yet somewhere, you just know, she will forever be in bloom. dearest and the best. So many people. So much sadness.

A funeral like no other. Pomp, yes, but also A scene that will never again be seen outside Buckingham Palace. The royal party standing outside the gates, to which someone had affixed a huge banner: DIANA OF LOVE. Sad cameos. Prince William tauloV in i ii II ii li I I'm i 1 i I i in i il i i.

ill i i Bw procwlon and rvtca 2,3 Sy fa ptetur 4,6 Us Ccrtyon on Nana' Ktm and 10,11 informality and spontaneity. A young crowd in sweatshirts and jeans, reminded perhaps for the first time of its own mortality. Tissues pressed to noses. Sobs, some stifled, others wrenching. A shout Flowers thrown in tilting his blonde head, just the way his mother used to do.

Prince Philip giving William a pat on the shoulder. Elton John, i in 4k II hi ll III I4 1 hi i-H (tMr Mi 1.