XXIV

SAINTS

YE, too, must fly before a chasing hand,
Angels and Saints, in every hamlet mourned !
Ah! if the old idolatry be spurned,

Let not your radiant Shapes desert the Land:
Her adoration was not your demand,

5

The fond heart proffered it—the servile heart;
And therefore are ye summoned to depart,
Michael, and thou, St. George, whose flaming brand *
The Dragon quelled; and valiant Margaret †
Whose rival sword a like Opponent slew:
And rapt Cecilia, seraph-haunted Queen ‡ ·
Of harmony; and weeping Magdalene,
Who in the penitential desert met

Gales sweet as those that over Eden blew !

ΙΟ

XXV

THE VIRGIN S

MOTHER! whose virgin bosom was uncrost
With the least shade of thought to sin allied;

* St. George, patron Saint of England, supposed to have suffered A.D. 284. The Greek Church honours him as the great martyr."-ED.

St. Margaret, supposed to have suffered martyrdom at Antioch, A.D. 275.-ED.

St. Cecilia, patron Saint of Music, has been enrolled as a martyr by the Latin Church from the fifth century.-ED.

§ Compare the Stanzas suggested in a Steam-boat off Saint Bees' Head, (1. 114); also the following sonnet by the late John Nichol, Professor of English Literature in the University of Glasgow. (See The Death of Themistocles, and other Poems, p. 189.)

AVE MARIA

Ave Maria! on a thousand thrones

Raised by the weary hearts that beat to thee,

APOLOGY

Woman! above all women glorified,
Our tainted nature's solitary boast;
Purer than foam on central ocean tost;
Brighter than eastern skies at daybreak strewn
With fancied roses, than the unblemished moon
Before her wane begins on heaven's blue coast;
Thy Image falls to earth. Yet some, I ween,
Not unforgiven the suppliant knee might bend,
As to a visible Power, in which did blend
All that was mixed and reconciled in Thee
Of mother's love with maiden purity,
Of high with low, celestial with terrene ! *

55

5

ΙΟ

XXVI

APOLOGY

NOT utterly unworthy to endure
Was the supremacy of crafty Rome ; †
Age after age to the arch of Christendom
Aërial keystone haughtily secure ;
Supremacy from Heaven transmitted pure,
As many hold; and, therefore, to the tomb

As 'neath the softer light the throbbing sea,
Thy name a spell of peace, in lingering tones
Is whispered through the world: thy truth condones
The feebler faith of worshippers that flee,
Lost in the sovereign awe, to bend the knee
By pictured holiness or breathing stones.
Mother of Christ! whom ages old adorn,

And hundred climes, by gentle thought and deed,
Forgive the sacrilege, the brandished scorn
Of the grim guardians of a narrow creed,
Who fence their folds from Love's serener law,
And "

grate on scrannel pipes of wretched straw."

ED.

5

* This sonnet was published in Time's Telescope, July 2, 1823, p. 136.— ED.

"To the second part of the same series" (the "Ecclesiastical Sonnets") "I have added two, in order to do more justice to the Papal Church for the services which she did actually render to Christianity and Humanity in the Middle Ages."-W. W. (in a letter to Professor Reed, Sept. 4, 1842).-ED.

Pass, some through fire—and by the scaffold some-
Like saintly Fisher,* and unbending More.†
“Lightly for both the bosom's lord did sit
"Upon his throne;"unsoftened, undismayed
By aught that mingled with the tragic scene
Of pity or fear; and More's gay genius played
With the inoffensive sword of native wit,
Than the bare axe more luminous and keen.

10

XXVII

IMAGINATIVE REGRETS

DEEP is the lamentation!

Not alone

From Sages justly honoured by mankind;
But from the ghostly tenants of the wind,
Demons and Spirits, many a dolorous groan
Issues for that dominion overthrown:
Proud Tiber grieves, and far-off Ganges, blind
As his own worshippers: and Nile, reclined
Upon his monstrous urn, the farewell moan
Renews.§ Through every forest, cave, and den,
Where frauds were hatched of old, hath sorrow past—
Hangs o'er the Arabian Prophet's native Waste, ||

5

II

John Fisher, born in 1469, became Bishop of Rochester in 1504, was one of the first in England to write against Luther, opposed the divorce of Henry VIII., was sent to the Tower in 1534, and his see declared void, was made a Cardinal by the Pope while in prison, and beheaded on Tower Hill, 1535.-ED.

Sir Thomas More, the author of Utopia, born in 1478, was Speaker of the House of Commons in 1523, and succeeded Wolsey as Lord Chancellor in 1529. Disapproving of the king's divorce, he resigned office, was committed to the Tower for refusing to take the oath of supremacy, found guilty of treason, and beheaded in 1535.-ED.

See Romeo and Juliet, act v. scene i. 1. 3

My bosom's lord sits lightly on his throne.

ED.

§ Compare the echo of the Lady's voice in the lines To Joanna, in the "Poems on the Naming of Places" (vol. ii. p. 157).—ED.

The desert around Mecca.-ED.

557

REFLECTIONS

Where once his airy helpers * schemed and planned 'Mid spectral1 lakes bemocking thirsty men, † And stalking pillars built of fiery sand. ‡

XXVIII

REFLECTIONS

5

GRANT, that by this unsparing hurricane
Green leaves with yellow mixed are torn away,
And goodly fruitage with the mother spray;
'Twere madness-wished we, therefore, to detain,
With hands stretched forth in 2 mollified disdain,
The "trumpery” that ascends in bare display—
Bulls, pardons, relics, cowls black, white, and grey-§
Upwhirled, and flying o'er the ethereal plain
Fast bound for Limbo Lake. || And yet not choice
But habit rules the unreflecting herd,

And airy bonds are hardest to disown;

Hence, with the spiritual sovereignty transferred
Unto itself, the Crown assumes a voice

Of reckless mastery, hitherto unknown.

1 1837.

1822.

ΙΟ

'Mid phantom

2 1827.

With farewell sighs of

1822.

* Mahomet affirmed that he had constant visits from angels; and that the angel Gabriel dictated to him the Koran.-ED.

The mirage.-ED.

Pillars of sand raised by whirlwinds in the desert, which correspond to waterspouts at sea.-ED.

§ See Paradise Lost, book iii. ll. 474, 475

Eremites and Friars,

White, black, and grey, with all their trumperie.

ED.

Hades.-ED.

XXIX

TRANSLATION OF THE BIBLE

BUT, to outweigh all harm, the sacred Book,
In dusty sequestration wrapt too long,

Assumes the accents of our native tongue;

And he who guides the plough, or wields the crook,
With understanding spirit now may look
Upon her records, listen to her song,

And sift her laws-much wondering that the wrong,
Which Faith has suffered, Heaven could calmly brook
Transcendent Boon! noblest that earthly King
Ever bestowed to equalize and bless

Under the weight of mortal wretchedness!

But passions spread like plagues, and thousands wild With bigotry shall tread the Offering

Beneath their feet, detested and defiled.*

5

ΙΟ

XXX

THE POINT AT ISSUE

Published 1827

FOR what contend the wise?-for nothing less
Than that the Soul, freed from the bonds of Sense,
And to her God restored by evidence 1

Of things not seen, drawn forth from their recess,
Root there, and not in forms, her holiness ;-

1 1832.

Than that pure Faith dissolve the bonds of Sense;
The Soul restored to God by evidence

* As was the case during the French Revolution.-ED.

1827.

5