'Tis the most fearful when the people's Of its grave echoes, swells a choral strain,
Whose votive burthen is “OUR KINGDOM'S HERE!"
DISSOLUTION OF THE MONASTERIES 1821. 1822
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.
XXIII CONTINUED
1821. 1822
YET many a Novice of the cloistral shade,
And many chained by vows, with eager glee
The warrant hail, exulting to be free;
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
To keep this new and questionable road?
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;
LATIMER AND RIDLEY 1821. 1827
How fast the Marian death-list is unrolled !
See Latimer and Ridley in the might
Of Faith stand coupled for a common flight!
One (like those prophets whom God sent of
old)
Transfigured, from this kindling hath fore-
told
A torch of inextinguishable light;
The Other gains a confidence as bold;
And thus they foil their enemy's despite.
The penal instruments, the shows of crime,
Are glorified while this once-mitred pair
Of saintly Friends the "murtherer's chain
partake,
Corded, and burning at the social stake:"
Earth never witnessed object more sublime
In constancy, in fellowship more fair!
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