Saturday September 6 6:35 PM EDT Tears Flow for Britain's 'Queen of Hearts' By Paul Majendie LONDON (Reuter) - Britain bid a tearful farewell Saturday to Princess Diana with a funeral for its "Queen of Hearts" that mixed raw emotion and bitterness. Princes William and Harry wept for the mother snatched cruelly from them. Queen Elizabeth bowed her head in tribute. Diana's brother, Earl Spencer, paid a hard-hitting tribute that touched the nation. Elton John's voice soared into the arches of Westminster Abbey to say goodbye to the "Candle in the Wind" that had flickered and died. She was just 36. The poignancy of the song cracked the composure of 15-year-old future King William and his 12-year-old brother Harry. The battle against tears was finally lost. Harry buried his head in his hands as the singer, alone at a grand piano, sang: "Your candle burned out long before your legend ever will." William, his blond good looks and shy smile so reminiscent of his mother, wept as John sang: "All our words cannot express the joy you brought us through the years." They provided a heart-rending image walking behind the coffin of the mother they adored. Clustered among the lillies on her coffin was a card with one word: "Mummy." After the hardest day of their young lives, Prince Charles took his sons to his country estate at Highgrove and pleaded for space to let them mourn in peace. Charles' press spokesman, Sandy Henney, said: "So far as the prince is concerned, he just wants his sons to have some private time where they can mourn and where they can come to terms with their loss and just be left alone." Diana's brother, Earl Spencer, electrified the 2,000-strong congregation in Westminster Abbey during his tribute to the "people's princess" with a coded attack on the royal family, as well as an open assault on the media he blamed for her death last Sunday in a car crash in Paris. She was later buried on an island in a lake in the grounds of her family estate at Althorp, central England, home of the Spencer family for 400 years. Charles, William and Harry were at the graveside, along with members of the Spencer family. A spokeswoman for the earl said no details of the burial would be released. "The earl always said that once the cortege had passed through the gates of Althorp it would be a strictly private family burial and that remains the case." The 33-year-old earl told the congregation in the abbey and radio listeners and television viewers around the world that Diana was "someone with a natural nobility who was classless and who proved in the last year that she needed no royal title to continue to generate her particular brand of magic." After her divorce from Charles in August 1996, the court stripped her of the title of Royal Highness. Only in the past 36 hours has she apparently been welcomed back into the royal fold. Spencer, condemning the media for hounding his sister to her death, vowed that her beloved sons would not suffer a similar fate. "We will not allow them to suffer the anguish that used regularly to drive you to tearful despair," he said in his moving tribute to the "big sister who mothered me." Queen Elizabeth inclined her head in a "neck bow" to her former daughter-in-law as Diana's cortege passed the gates of Buckingham Palace. It was escorted on the last leg of its two-hour journey to Westminster Abbey by her sons and her former husband. Charles's father, Prince Philip, and Diana's brother also fell in behind the hearse draped in the Royal Standard and carrying three white flower arrangements. The smallest carried an envelope with the single word "Mummy." The bell of the abbey tolled once a minute as the coffin approached. It was carried up the abbey steps by eight pallbearers. For three hours Britain came to a standstill and London was thronged by crowds bigger than any seen since the wedding of Charles and Diana in 1981. The television audience almost certainly exceeded the 700 million who watched the wedding. Despite the crush of people, the procession was watched in almost total silence. As the service ended and the coffin was carried toward the abbey's west door, the whole nation stood for a minute, lost in their memories of a princess, dead at the tragically early age of 36. Inside the abbey, Diana's boys broke down as Elton John sang a version of "Candle in the Wind" adapted to their mother's memory. But Spencer did not let grief cloud his other feelings. Spencer pledged that the "blood family" of William and Harry would ensure that the boys would not be "simply immersed by duty and tradition but can sing openly as you (Diana) planned" and disclosed that Diana had often talked of leaving England to escape the press. "I don't think she ever understood why her genuinely good intentions were sneered at by the media, why there appeared to be a permanent quest on their behalf to bring her down. It is baffling. "My own and only explanation is that genuine goodness is threatening to those at the opposite end of the moral spectrum. "It is a point to remember that, of all the ironies about Diana, perhaps the greatest was this: a girl given the name of the ancient goddess of hunting was, in the end, the most hunted person of the modern age." Spencer ended his speech from the heart barely in control of his emotions. As he stepped from the pulpit, applause from the crowds outside rolled into the abbey and most of the congregation joined in. Paparazzi photographers are accused of having a hand in Diana's death by mercilessly pursuing her and companion Dodi Al Fayed as their driver speeded up to escape them. Dodi also died in the crash and his multimillionaire father, Mohamed Al Fayed, attended the funeral. At the end of the service, the coffin was taken by road 80 miles to the Spencer family home at Althorp, central England, through crowds, 20 deep in places, which lined the roads and highway and crowded on to bridges. Many mourners dropped flowers on to the hearse as it passed underneath or threw bouquets from the roadside, forcing the driver to use his wipers to clear the windshield. By the time it approached Althorp, the roof of the slowly moving car was piled high with flowers. It entered the estate for the private burial at 10:32 a.m. EDT, giving the world its last glimpse of Diana. She is to be buried on an island in an ornamental lake on her family's estate. Police, who had been ready for up to six million to pack central London, said they had given up counting the crowds, which were 20 deep at crash barriers along the cortege's path. Grief was the overwhelming emotion but forgiveness was also in the air. The queen was accompanied to the abbey by another former daughter-in-law who had strayed from the royal path of rectitude, Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York. The queen, condemned by press and public this week for not responding quickly enough to the public grief over Diana's death, made a significant gesture as she left Buckingham Palace for the funeral. In an unprecedented breach of royal protocol, the monarch's personal standard was lowered and replaced by a national flag, hoisted only to half-staff. Protocol had finally been broken by the will of the people. Buckingham Palace had promised a "unique funeral for a unique person" and the hourlong service, combining tradition and informality, moved all who witnessed it. The congregation was a mirror of Diana's interests and good works. U.S. First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, actor Tom Cruise and opera singer Luciano Pavarotti sat alongside AIDS victims, the disabled and charity workers. Elton, comforted by Diana at fashion designer Gianni Versace's funeral in July, accompanied himself on a grand piano to "Candle in the Wind," a song dedicated to Marilyn Monroe and adapted by its composer, Bernie Taupin, to laud Diana's legacy. "Goodbye England's Rose, may you ever grow in our hearts. You were the grace that placed itself where lives were torn apart," sang ashen-faced John, holding back the tears. People listening to the service broke into spontaneous applause as he finished, emotionally drained. Diana's two elder sisters read poems and Prime Minister Tony Blair delivered a stirring reading of 1 Corinthians 13 -- "For now we see through a glass darkly ... And now abideth faith, hope, love, these three: but the greatest of them is love."