University of Virginia Library

II. PART II.

XV. THE FRENCH REVOLUTION AND NATIONAL APOSTASY.

Trampling a dark hill a red sun athwart
I saw a host that rent their clothes and hair
And dashed their spread hands 'gainst the sunset glare
And cried, ‘Go from us, God, since God Thou art!
Utterly from our coasts and streets depart,
Court, camp, and senate hall, and mountain bare;
Our pomp Thou troublest, and our feast dost scare,
And with Thy temples dost confuse our mart!
Depart Thou from our hearing and our seeing:
Depart Thou from the works and ways of men
Their laws, their thoughts, the inmost of their being:
Black nightmare, hence, that earth may breathe again!’
‘Can God depart?’ I asked. A voice replied,
Close by, ‘Not so; each Sin at heart is Deicide.’

XVI. A RUINED FRENCH ABBEY.

In thee the Daily Sacrifice hath ceased—
Twain Avarchs, shades far cast from Antichrist,
Revolt, and blasphemy, Sin's king and priest,
Here slew the Just and for His raiment diced:
Here Revolution, ruin-beneficed
Sharpened with rapine's file her dagger's edge:
She sold the spoil who wrought the sacrilege:
False Freedom spake it; and her word sufficed.
O France, long dear to God, once saintly nation,
Land of Saint Louis and the Fleur de Lys
Must Italy partake thy desolation
Partaking thy transgression? Say, must she
The grace and glory of God's New Creation,
Make end like yonder skeleton tower and thee?

XVII. THE LAWLESS RACE.

The Scriptures of the Unjust thus prophesy:
‘The Gentiles we! your Christian Good is Ill:
We, faithless styled, to Babel faithful still,
Build as she built and laws save hers defy:
No difference we concede 'twixt Truth and Lie
Save what the nations fashion. Each at will
Some Faith should license; fools dissentient kill:
Best creed is ‘Unbelief, in Unity.’
But what is written? ‘This shall be the lot
Of all who war, Jerusalem, on thee:
Within their mouth the tongue dried up shall rot;
The eye drop out, that eye which would not see;
And, shivering as they stand, from off their bones
Their flesh shall melt and rot upon the stones.’

XVIII.

Remember, Italy, thy judged Compeer
France that before thee trod the ways unblest:
Long since she made her Revolution: rest
She makes not yet, from anguished year to year
Circling through wreck to ruin yet more drear.
‘Make them a wheel!’ Thus prayed, by rebels pressed,
The Prophet-King: how oft, a bitter jest,
That warning haunts the thoughtful patriot's ear!
O Italy, discern 'twixt grain and chaff!
For Freedom's sake the enchanter's cup fling down:
Spurn the base brood that tempt but to betray!
On whom, deceived ones, wage ye war this day?
On that sole King who held his sceptre-staff
Freedom to fence; for man's sake wore his crown.

XIX. THE CHURCH OF THE MADELEINE AT PARIS AND THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

O that the people of this guilty land
Might estimate themselves and it aright!
Accept yon Temple's sternly kind command
Her warning vainly whispered day and night:
To lift their glory to a loftier height
A people raised this creature of their hand:—
Teach them, huge pile, with all thy pillared might,
Humility! Do thou their boast withstand!
Bid them, in sight of angels and of men
Brow-bent and round thee kneeling, to confess
That sin whose serpent offspring, not yet dead,
Creeps round the earth and stings it! Bid them shed
Such tears as fell in the waste wilderness
On thy worn bosom, penitent Magdalen!

XX. THE STATUE OF VOLTAIRE,

ERECTED IN PARIS DURING THE GERMAN INVASION OF

What Shape ascends o'er yonder Stygian sea
Of upturned faces—Shape far-off descried
With myriad-wrinkled brow, and serpent-eyed?
That city which adores him, who is she?
Fitly the hour is chosen! Fatefully
Advance the armies sent to plague the pride
That built its tower on sand and God defied!
High Priest of Unbelief and Anarchy
Ris'st thou to see thy work? the doom to hear
Of nations, Christian once, that spurn their trust?
Hark to that gun! More near it sounds, and near—
Land of brave hearts! ere yet descends that woe
Which comes to save not slay, thy Tempter know!
Dash back that idol to its native dust!

XXI. THE FRANCE OF A FUTURE TIME.

Laugh, thou that weep'st; or with thy weeping blend
The glory of that joy which mocks at pain:
Vain was thy pride; thy penance is not vain:
That woe was the beginning, not the end:
Beyond that rain of fire I see descend
Armies of God t'ward yon ensanguined plain;
And these the Cross and those the Crown sustain:—
Elect of Penitents, thy forehead bend;
Meet thou that crown in hope that springs from love!
Once more true greatness greets thee from above:
At last, while far away the tempests rave,
Forth from the ashes of thy Pagan boast
Leaps thy new life! 'Mid yon celestial host
Thy Clotilde triumphs, and thy Genevieve.

XXII. THE NEW GERMAN PERSECUTION.

Revolted province of the Church of God,
But yesterday an Empire made! Too long
Thou lift'st the froward foot and clamorous tongue
Unweeting of the retributive rod:
Her singers once—her saints—thy pastures trod:
Still rise her minster towers thy streets among:
Her crumbling abbeys still denounce their wrong:
Hers every flower that gems the sacred sod!
This day thy Teachers world-renowned impeach
With deepening spleen the Scriptures as the Pope:
Learn from thy second fall! refrain thy speech:
With humbleness alone is stored thy hope:
Judge thou thyself; staunch first thy wound at home:
Rome's prodigal is not the judge of Rome.

XXIII.

Fair Land! A question I would ask of thee:
A time there was when, wanderers wild and rude,
Thy children clave the river, pierced the wood
Heart-strong yet blind, nor wise, nor just, nor free:—
What changed to Realms that raging Anarchy?
What Power was that which tamed the barbarous brood,
Evoked its thought; its wayward will subdued;
Its warring kingdoms crowned with unity?
The Faith—the Church! What progress had been thine
That Church disowned? Thy Nations where this day
Shorn of that Faith's surviving discipline?
Thy Prophet's teaching where? Thy Poet's lay?
That Church was Italy's selectest dower—
Are those her friends who mock its Head this hour?

XXIV. THE FAITHFUL FEW.

Not vain that ten years' agony! Thus much
It proved: whate'er were states and courts, whate'er
Statesmen sense-blind might swear and then unswear,
In Europe's heart survived great Nature's touch:
From farthest lands there flocked who scorned to clutch
Fruit of false peace: they rushed to do and dare
Or die. Of such was Lamoricière,
Charette, O'Reilly, Pimodan; of such
Kanzler, who, when the Roman wall in rolled,
Stood in the breach. Knights of the Faith, 'tis well!
Your place is with those Genoese of old
Who, sole of Europe, when Byzantium fell
Fought for the Cross. Ye saved mankind one shame:
Mentana guards your dead; the Church your fame.

XXV. MONTALEMBERT AND DE MÉRODE.

Montalembert! De Mérode! Linked were ye
In bonds more strong than those of human love,
Twins of one Faith and gendered from above—
One fruitful Truth, ‘God's City must be free,’
Prime Truth of Christianized Civility:
For that one Truth in word and work ye strove;
Nor strove in vain, as years to come shall prove
When those who shape their ‘Throned Democracy,’
That Matter-God the foe of cot and crown,
Hard hunted by the creature of their hands,
Flee from his face amazed o'er seas and lands.
The praise of such ye spurned, nor feared their frown:
Ye battled for man's hope; God's Church confessed:
Warriors, sleep well; for ye have earned your rest.

XXVI. THE WORLD'S APPRECIATIONS.

Minuter minds conceive not what is great:
To them 'tis nothing as to fleshly ears
The music of the planetary spheres:
Its full-faced presence leaves them unelate;
And when, submissive to all-mastering fate,
That greatness dies, or, deathless, disappears,
Upon its grave the triflers drop no tears,
The feasters not one hour their jests abate.
To such what meant that Roman Kingship hoar,
Link of the old world with ours? A gaud, now gone!
—'Tis thus when parents die! the wife, the son
Weep by the bier; the poor beside the door:
Small shapes that buzz around feel anguish none:
To cricket and to moth the house is as before.

XXVII. THE HIGHER CIVILIZATION.

Blow struck at Rome an instant echo hath
In every land where sits the Church a guest:
The centre's there. A local church oppressed
By popular madness or a tyrant's wrath
Not less, like Thecla, lions in her path,
May stand secure; though galled in head and breast
May work God's work, then take a martyr's rest
Cecilia-like, within the crimsoned bath
Of her own blood. Meantime the Church is free,
Her doctrine sure while free He sits at Rome
Who speaks the authentic voice of Christendom:
His Faith, all know, is hers. If bound were He,
The whole no longer could secure the part:
The world's broad hand would lie upon the Church's heart.