CISTERTIAN MONASTERY.
Here Man more purely lives, less oft doth fall,*
More promptly rises, walks with nicer heed,
More safely rests, dies happier, is freed
'Earlier from cleansing fires, and gains withal
"A brighter crown."— On yon Cistertian wall
That confident assurance may be read;
And, to like shelter, from the world have fled
Increasing multitudes. The potent call
Doubtless shall cheat full oft the heart's desires;
Yet, while the rugged Age on pliant knee
Vows to rapt Fancy humble fealty,
A gentler life spreads round the holy spires;
Where'er they rise, the sylvan waste retires,
And aëry harvests crown the fertile lea.
Bonum est nos hic esse, quia homo vivit purius, cadit rarius, surgit velocius, incedit cautius, quiescit securius, moritur felicius, purgatur citius, præmiatur copiosius." Bernard.
"This sentence," says Dr. Whitaker, "is usually inscribed on some conspicuous past of the Cistertian houses."
RELAXATIONS OF THE FEUDAL SYSTEM. DEPLORABLE his lot who tills the ground, His whole life long tills it, with heartless toil Of villain-service, passing with the soil To each new Master, like a steer or hound, Or like a rooted tree, or stone earth-bound; But, mark how gladly, through their own domains, The Monks relax or break these iron chains; While Mercy, uttering, through their voice, a sound Echoed in Heaven, cries out, "ye Chiefs, abate These legalized oppressions! Man whose name And Nature God disdained not; Man, whose soul Christ died for, cannot forfeit his high claim To live and move exempt from all control Which fellow-feeling doth not mitigate!"
MONKS AND SCHOOLMEN.
RECORD We too, with just and faithful pen,
That many hooded Cenobites there are,
Who in their private Cells have yet a care
Of public quiet; unambitious Men,
Counsellors for the world, of piercing ken;
Whose fervent exhortations from afar
Move Princes to their duty, peace or war;
And oft-times in the most forbidding den
Of solitude, with love of science strong,
How patiently the yoke of thought they bear!
How subtly glide its finest threads along!
Spirits that crowd the intellectual sphere
With mazy boundaries, as the Astronomer
With orb and cycle girds the starry throng.
AND, not in vain embodied to the sight,
Religion finds even in the stern retreat
Of feudal Sway her own appropriate seat;
From the Collegiate pomps on Windsor's height,
Down to the humble altar, which the Knight
And his Retainers of the embattled hall
Seek in domestic oratory small,
For prayer in stillness, or the chanted rite;
Then chiefly dear, when foes are planted round,
Who teach the intrepid guardians of the place,
Hourly exposed to death, with famine worn,
And suffering under many a perilous wound,
How sad would be their durance, if forlorn
Of offices dispensing heavenly grace!
AND what melodious sounds at times prevail!
And, ever and anon, how bright a gleam
Pours on the surface of the turbid Stream!
What heartfelt fragrance mingles with the gale
That swells the bosom of our passing sail!
For where, but on this River's margin, blow
Those flowers of Chivalry, to bind the brow
Of hardihood with wreaths that shall not fail!
Fair Court of Edward! wonder of the world!
I see & matchless blazonry unfurled
Of wisdom, magnanimity, and love;
And meekness tempering honourable pride;
The Lamb is couching by the Lion's side,
And near the flame-eyed Eagle sits the Dove.
BUT whence came they who for the Saviour Lord
Have long borne witness us the Scriptures teach?
Ages ere Valdo raised his voice to preach
In Gallic ears the unadulterate Word,
Their fugitive Progenitors explored
Subalpine vales, in quest of safe retreats
Where that pure Church survives, though summe heats
Open a passage to the Romish sword,
Far as it dares to follow. Herbs self-sown,
And fruitage gathered from the chestnut wood,
Nourish the Sufferers then; and mists, that brood
O'er chasms with new-fallen obstacles bestrown,
Protect them; and the eternal snow that daunts
Aliens, is God's good winter for their haunts.
Nor can Imagination quit the shores
Of these bright scenes without a farewell glance
Given to those dream-like Issues-that Romance
Of many-coloured life which Fortune pours
Round the Crusaders, till on distant shores
Their labours end; or they return to lie,
The vow performed, in cross-legged effigy,
Devoutly stretched upon their chancel floors.
Am I deceived? Or is their requiem chanted
By voices never mute when Heaven unties
Her inmost, softest, tenderest harmonies;
Requiem which Earth takes up with voice undaunted,
When she would tell how Good, and Brave, and Wise,
For their high guerdon not in vain have panted!
PRAISED be the Rivers, from their mountain-springs
Shouting to Freedom, "Plant thy Banners here!"
To harassed Piety, "Dismiss thy fear,
And in our caverns smooth thy ruffled wings!"
Nor be unthanked their tardiest lingerings
'Mid reedy fens wide-spread and marches drear,
Their own creation, till their long career
End in the sea engulphed. Such welcomings
As came from mighty Po when Venice rose,
Greeted those simple Heirs of truth divine
Who near his fountains sought obscure repose,
Yet were prepared as glorious lights to shine,
Should that be needed for their sacred Charge;
Blest Prisoners They, whose spirits are at large!
TRANSUBSTANTIATION
ENOUGH! for see, with dim association
The tapers burn; the odorous incense feeds
A greedy flame; the pompous mass proceeds;
The Priest bestows the appointed consecration;
And, while the Host is raised, its elevation
An awe and supernatural horror breeds,
And all the People bow their heads, like reeds
To a soft breeze, in lowly adoration.
This Valdo brooked not. On the banks of Rhone
He taught, till persecution chased him thence
To adore the Invisible, and him alone.
Nor were his Followers loth to seek defence,
Mid woods and wilds, on Nature's craggy throne,
From rites that trample upon soul and sense.
THESE who gave earliest notice, as the Lark
Springs from the ground the morn to gratulate,
Who rather rose the day to antedate,
By striking out a solitary spark,
When all the world with midnight gloom was dark
These Harbingers of good, whom bitter hate
In vain endeavoured to exterminate,
Fell Obloquy pursues with hideous bark ;*
The list of foul names bestowed upon those poor creatures is long and curious;— and, as is, alas! too natural, most of the opprobrious appellations are drawn from circumstances into which they were forced by their persecutors, who even consoli. dated their miseries into one reproachful term, calling them Pa tarenians or Paturins, from pati, to suffer.
Dwellers with wolves, she names them, for the Pine
And green Oak are their covert; as the gloom
Of night oft foils their Enemy's design,
She calls them Riders on the flying broom;
Sorcerers, whose frame and aspect have become
One and the same through practices malign
CORRUPTIONS OF THE HIGHER CLERGY. "Woe to you, Prelates! rioting in ease "And cumbrous wealth- the shame of your estate; You, on whose progress dazzling trains await "Of pompous horses; whom vain titles please; "Who will be served by others on their knees, "Yet will yourselves to God no service pay; "Pastors who neither take nor point the way "To Heaven; for either lost in vanities "Ye have no skill to teach, or if ye know "And speak the word" Alas! of fearful things "Tis the most fearful when the People's eye Abuse hath cleared from vain imaginings; And taught the general voice to prophesy Of Justice armed, and Pride to be laid low.
WARS OF YORK AND LANCASTER.
THUS is the storm abated by the craft
Of a shrewd Counsellor, eager to protect
ABUSE OF MONASTIC POWER.
AND what is Penance with her knotted thong
The Church, whose power hath recently been checked, Mortification with the shirt of hair,
Wan cheek, and knees indurated with prayer,
Vigils, and fastings rigorous as long,
If cloistered Avarice scruple not to wrong
The pious, humble, useful Secular,
And rob the people of his daily care,
Scorning that world whose blindness makes her strong
Inversion strange! that unto One who lives
For self, and struggles with himself alone,
The amplest share of heavenly favour gives:
That to a Monk allots, in the esteem
Of God and Man, place higher than to him
Who on the good of others builds his own!
ONCE more the Church is seized with sudden fear,
And at her call is Wicliffe disinhumed:
Yea, his dry bones to ashes are consumed
And flung into the brook that travels near;
Forthwith, that ancient Voice which Streams can hear,
Thus speaks (that Voice which walks upon the wind,
Though seldom heard by busy human kind,)
MONASTIC VOLUPTUOUSNESS. YET more, round many a Convent's blazing fire Unhallowed threads of revelry are spun; There Venus sits disguised like a Nun,While Bacchus, clothed in semblance of a Friar, Pours out his choicest beverage high and higher
Sparkling, until it cannot choose but run
Over the bowl, whose silver lip hath won
An instant kiss of masterful desire
To stay the precious waste. Through every brain
The domination of the sprightly juice
Spreads high conceits to madding Fancy dear,
Till the arched roof, with resolute abuse
Of its grave echoes, swells a choral strain,
Whose votive burthen is-"OUR KINGDOM'S HERE!"
Like ships before whose keels, full long embayed
In polar ice, propitious winds have made
Unlooked-for outlet to an open sea,
Their liquid world, for bold discovery,
In all her quarters temptingly displayed!
Hope guides the young; but when the old must pass
The threshold, whither shall they turn to find
The hospitality - the alms (alas!
Alms may be needed) which that house bestowed?
Can they, in faith and worship, train the mind
To keep this new and questionable road?
DISSOLUTION OF THE MONASTERIES. THREATS Come which no submission may assuage; No sacrifice avert, no power dispute;
The tapers shall be quenched, the belfries mute,
And, 'mid their choirs unroofed by selfish rage,
The warbling wren shall find a leafy cage;
The gadding bramble hang her purple fruit;
And the green lizard and the gilded newt
Lead unmolested lives, and die of age.*
The owl of evening and the woodland fox
For their abode the shrines of Waltham choose:
Proud Glastonbury can no more refuse
To stoop her head before these desperate shocks-
She whose high pomp displaced, as story tells,
Arimathean Joseph's wattled cells.
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!
THE lovely Nun (submissive, but more meek
Through saintly habit than from effort due
To unrelenting mandates that pursue
With equal wrath the .eps of strong and weak)
Goes forth unveiling timidly her cheek
Suffused with blushes of celestial hue,
While through the Convent gate to open view
Softly she glides, another home to seek.
Not Iris, issuing from her cloudy shrine,
An Apparition more divinely bright!
Not more attractive to the dazzled sight
Those watery giories, on the stormy brine
Poured forth, while summer suns at distance shine,
And the green vaies lie hushed in sober light!
YET some, Noviciates of the cloistral shade,
Or chained by vows, with undissembled glee
The warrant hail - exulting to be free;
♦ These two lines are adopted from a MS., written about the year 1770, which accidentally fell into my possession. The
close of the preceding Sonnet on monastic voluptuousness is aken from the same source, as is the verse," Where Venus BIL," &c.
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!
Nor 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
Upon her records, listen to her song,
Pass, some through fire-and by the scaffold some And sift her laws-much wondering that the wrong
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.
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.
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
Of things not seen-drawn forth from their recess,
Root there, and not in forms, her holiness;
For Faith which to the Patriarchs did dispense
Sure guidance, ere a ceremonial fence
Was needful round men thirsting to transgress;
For Faith, more perfect still, with which the Lord
Of all, himself a Spirit, in the youth
Of Christian aspiration, deigned to fill
The temples of their hearts who, with his word
Informed, were resolute to do his will,
And worship him in spirit and in truth.
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 gray,
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.
"SWEET is the holiness of Youth".
-so felt
Time-honoured Chaucer, when he framed the lay
By which the Prioress beguiled the way,
And many a Pilgrim's rugged heart did melt.
Hadst thou, loved Bard! whose spirit often dwelt
In the clear land of vision, but foreseen
King, Child, and Seraph, blended in the mien
Of pious Edward kneeling as he knelt
In meek and simple Infancy, what joy
For universal Christendom had thrilled
Thy heart! what hopes inspired thy genius, skilled
(O great Precursor, genuine morning Star)
The lucid shafts of reason to employ,
Piercing the Papal darkness from afar!
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
EDWARD SIGNING THE WARRANT FOR THE EXE CUTION OF JOAN OF KENT.
THE tears of man in various measure gush
From various sources; gently overflow
From blissful transport some - from clefts of woe
Some with ungovernable impulse rush;
And some, coëval with the earliest blush
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