Imagens da página
PDF
ePub

VII.

I had sat three nights by the child - I could not watch her for fourMy brain had begun to reel-I felt I could do it no more.

That was my sleeping-night, but I thought that it never would pass.

There was a thunder-clap once, and a clatter of hail on the glass, And there was a phantom cry that I heard as I tost about,

The motherless bleat of a lamb in the storm and the darkness without; My sleep was broken besides with dreams

of the dreadful knife And fears for our delicate Emmie who scarce would escape with her life; Then in the gray of the morning it seem'd she stood by me and smiled, And the doctor came at his hour, and we went to see the child.

[blocks in formation]
[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

In Judah, for in thee the Lord was born; Nor thou in Britain, little Lutterworth, Least, for in thee the word was born again.

Heaven-sweet Evangel, ever living word,

Who whilom spakest to the South in Greek

About the soft Mediterranean shores, And then in Latin to the Latin crowd, As good need was - thou hast come to talk our isle.

Hereafter thou, fulfilling Pentecost, Must learn to use the tongues of all the world.

Yet art thou thine own witness that thou bringest Not peace, a sword, a fire.

What did he say, My frighted Wiclif-preacher whom I crost In flying hither? that one night a crowd Throng'd the waste field about the city gates:

The king was on them suddenly with a host.

Why there? they came to hear their preacher. Then

Some cried on Cobham, on the good Lord Cobham ;

Ay, for they love me! but the kingnor voice

Nor finger raised against him- took and hang'd,

Took, hang'd and burnt how manythirty-nine

Call'd it rebellion - hang'd, poor friends, | Lord give thou power to thy two wit

[blocks in formation]

Once my fast friend : I would have given my life

To help his own from scathe, a thousand lives

To save his soul. He might have come to learn

Our Wiclif's learning: but the worldly Priests

Who fear the king's hard common-sense should find

What rotten piles uphold their masonwork,

[blocks in formation]

Dooms our unlicensed preacher to the flame,

Urge him to foreign war. O had he will'd The mitre-sanction'd harlot draws his

I might have stricken a lusty stroke for him.

But he would not; far liever led my friend Back to the pure and universal church, But he would not: whether that heirless flaw

In his throne's title make him feel so frail,

He leans on Antichrist; or that his mind,
So quick, so capable in soldiership,
In matters of the faith, alas the while!
More worth than all the kingdoms of this
world,

Runs in the rut, a coward to the Priest.

[blocks in formation]

clerks

[blocks in formation]

Gospel, the Priest's pearl, flung down to swine

[blocks in formation]
[merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]
[merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

truth,

Who rose and doom'd me to the fire.

Amen! Nay, I can burn, so that the Lord of life Be by me in my death.

Those three! the fourth Was like the son of God. Not burut were they.

On them the smell of burning had not past.

That was a miracle to convert the king. These Pharisees, this Caiaphas-Arundel What miracle could turn? He here again, He thwarting their traditions of Himself,

He would be found a heretic to Himself, And doom'd to Burn alive.

So, caught, I burn. Burn? heathen men have borne as much as this,

[merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][ocr errors][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

queen

CHAINS, my good lord: in your raised Of the Ocean of the Indies

brows I read

[blocks in formation]

we

[blocks in formation]

Our title, which we never mean to yield, Our guerdon not alone for what we did, But our amends for all we might have done

The vast occasion of our stronger lifeEighteen long years of waste, seven in your Spain,

Lost, showing courts and kings a truth the babe

Will suck in with his milk hereafter — earth

At Barcelona-tho' you were not then A sphere. So bearded. Yes. The city deck'd her

self

1 He was burnt on Christmas Day, 1417.

Were you at Salamanca ? No. We fronted there the learning of all Spain,

All their cosmogonies, their astronomies: | On Guanahani! but I changed the name; Guess-work they guessed it, but the gol- San Salvador I call'd it; and the light Grew as I gazed, and brought out a broad sky

den guess

Is morning-star to the full round of truth. No guess-work! I was certain of my goal;

Some thought it heresy; that would not hold.

King David call'd the heavens a hide, a

tent

Spread over earth, and so this earth was flat;

Some cited old Lactantius: could it be That trees grew downward, rain fell upward, men

Walk'd like the fly on ceilings? and besides

The great Augustine wrote that none could breathe

Within the zone of heat; so might there be

Two Adams, two mankinds, and that was clean

Against God's word: thus was I beaten back,

And chiefly to my sorrow by the Church, And thought to turn my face from Spain, appeal

Once more to France or England; but our Queen

Recall'd me, for at last their Highnesses Were half-assured this earth might be a sphere.

All glory to the all-blessed Trinity, All glory to the mother of our Lord, And Holy Church, from whom I never swerved

Not even by one hair's-breadth of heresy, I have accomplish'd what I came to do.

Not yet not all - last night a dream -I sail'd

On my first voyage, harass'd by the frights

Of my first crew, their curses and their

groans.

The great flame-banner borne by Teneriffe,

The compass, like an old friend false at last

In our most need, appall'd them, and the wind

Still westward, and the weedy seas — at length

The landbird, and the branch with berries on it, The carven staff

light

[blocks in formation]

and last the light, the

And

given the Great Khan's palaces to the Moor,

« AnteriorContinuar »