On our past selves in life's declining day :
For as, by discipline of Time made wise,
We learn to tolerate the infirmities
And faults of others-gently as he may,1
So with our own the mild Instructor deals,
Teaching us to forget them or forgive.*
Perversely curious, then, for hidden ill
Why should we break Time's charitable seals?
Once ye were holy, ye are holy still;
Your spirit freely let me drink, and live!
EMIGRANT FRENCH CLERGY.
Pub. 1827.
EVEN while I speak, the sacred roofs of France
Are shattered into dust; and self-exiled
From altars threatened, levelled, or defiled,
Wander the Ministers of God, as chance
Opens a way for life, or consonance
Of faith invites. More welcome to no land
The fugitives than to the British strand,
Where priest and layman with the vigilance
Of true compassion greet them. Creed and test
Vanish before the unreserved embrace
Of catholic humanity :-distrest
They came, and, while the moral tempest roars
* This is borrowed from an affecting passage in Mr George Dyer's history of Cambridge.-W. W., 1822.
Throughout the Country they have left, our shores
Give to their Faith a fearless' resting-place.
THUS all things lead to Charity, secured
By them who blessed the soft and happy gale
That landward urged the great Deliverer's sail,*
Till in the sunny bay his fleet was moored!
Propitious hour! had we, like them, endured
Sore stress of apprehension,† with a mind
Sickened by injuries, dreading worse designed,
From month to month trembling and unassured,
How had we then rejoiced! But we have felt,
As a loved substance, their futurity:
Good, which they dared not hope for, we have seen;
A State whose generous will through earth is dealt;
A State-which, balancing herself between
License and slavish order, dares be free.
BUT liberty, and triumphs on the Main,
And laurelled armies, not to be withstood--
What serve they? if, on transitory good
Intent, and sedulous of abject gain,
The State (ah, surely not preserved in vain !)
The statesmen of the Revolution, who hailed the arrival of William of Orange from Holland.-ED.
+ See Burnet, who is unusually animated on this subject; the east wind, so anxiously expected and prayed for, was called the “Protestant wind.” -W. W., 1822.
Forbear to shape due channels which the Flood
Of sacred truth may enter-till it brood
O'er the wide realm, as o'er the Egyptian plain
The all-sustaining Nile. No more
Is conscious of her want; through England's bounds,
In rival haste, the wished-for Temples rise! *
I hear the Sabbath bells' harmonious chime
Float on the breeze-the heavenliest of all sounds.
That vale or hill1 prolongs or multiplies !
CHURCH TO BE ERECTED.†
BE this the chosen site; the virgin sod,
Moistened from age to age by dewy eve,
Shall disappear, and grateful earth receive
The corner-stone from hands that build to God.
Yon reverend hawthorns, hardened to the rod
Of winter storms, yet budding cheerfully;
Those forest oaks of Druid memory,
Shall long survive, to shelter the Abode
Of genuine Faith. Where, haply, 'mid this band
Of daisies, shepherds sate of yore and wove
May-garlands, there let2 the holy altar stand
For kneeling adoration ;-while-above,
Broods, visibly portrayed, the mystic Dove,
That shall protect from blasphemy the Land.
* In 1818, under the ministry of Lord Liverpool, £1,000,000 were voted by Parliament to build new churches in England. —ED.
†This, and the two following sonnets, were probably the first composed of these Ecclesiastical Sketches. The "church to be erected" was a new church built on Coleorton Moor by Sir George Beaumont. (See Prefatory note to the series, p. 1.)-ED.
MINE ear has rung, my spirit1 sunk subdued,
Sharing the strong emotion of the crowd,
When each pale brow to dread hosannas bowed
While clouds of incense mounting veiled the rood,
That glimmered like a pine-tree dimly viewed
Through Alpine vapours. Such appalling rite
Our Church prepares not, trusting to the might
Of simple truth with grace divine imbued;
Yet will we not conceal the precious Cross,
Like men ashamed:* the Sun with his first smile.
Shall greet that symbol crowning the low Pile:
And the fresh air of incense-breathing morn†
Shall wooingly embrace it; and green moss
Creep round its arms through centuries unborn.
NEW CHURCH-YARD.
THE encircling ground, in native turf arrayed,
Is now by solemn consecration given
To social interests, and to favouring Heaven;
And where the rugged colts their gambols played,
And wild deer bounded through the forest glade,
The Lutherans have retained the Cross within their churches: it is to be regretted that we have not done the same.-W. W., 1822. It has always been retained without, and is now scarcely less common within the churches of England. Did the poet confound the Cross with the Crucifix? -ED.
+ Compare Gray's Elegy, stanza 5—
"The breezy call of incense-breathing morn."
Unchecked as when by merry Outlaw driven,
Shall hymns of praise resound at morn and even;
And soon, full soon, the lonely Sexton's spade
Shall wound the tender sod.
Encincture small,
But infinite its grasp of weal and woe!1
Hopes, fears, in never-ending ebb and flow ;-
The spousal trembling, and the 'dust to dust,'
The prayers, the contrite struggle, and the trust
That to the Almighty Father looks through all.
OPEN your gates, ye everlasting Piles !
Types of the spiritual Church which God hath reared;
Not loth we quit the newly-hallowed sward
And humble altar, 'mid your sumptuous aisles
To kneel, or thrid your intricate defiles,
Or down the nave to pace in motion slow;
Watching, with upward eye,' the tall tower grow
And mount, at every step, with living wiles
Instinct to rouse the heart and lead the will
By a bright ladder to the world above.
Open your gates, ye Monuments of love
Divine! Thou, Lincoln, on thy sovereign hill!
Thou, stately York! and Ye, whose splendours cheer Isis and Cam, to patient Science dear!
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