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. 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 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, 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, Runs in the rut, a coward to the Priest. clerks Gospel, the Priest's pearl, flung down to swine 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, queen CHAINS, my good lord: in your raised Of the Ocean of the Indies brows I read we 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 and last the light, the And given the Great Khan's palaces to the Moor, |