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,
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!
MOTHER! Whose virgin bosom was uncrost
With the least shade of thought to sin allied;
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!
NOT utterly unworthy to endure
Was the supremacy of crafty Rome;
Age after age to the arch of Christendom
Aerial keystone haughtily secure;
Supremacy from Heaven transmitted pure,
As many hold; and, therefore, to the tomb
Pass, some through fire and by the scaffold
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.
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
Hangs o'er the Arabian Prophet's native Waste, Where once his airy helpers schemed and planned
'Mid spectral lakes bemocking thirsty men, And stalking pillars built of fiery sand.
GRANT, that by this unsparing hurricane
Green leaves with yellow mixed are torn away,
And goodly fruitage with the mother spray;
"T were madness-wished we, therefore, to detain,
With hands stretched forth in mollified disdain,
The "trumpery" that ascends in bare display
Bulls, pardons, relics, cowls black, white, and
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.
|