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Mystic Trees

by Michael Field [i.e. K. H. Bradley and E. E. Cooper]

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130

DREAD ST. MICHAEL

Dread St. Michael, that with God prevails—
Priests, punctilious, insist
That thou canst not be
Guardian Angel unto me,
Who am but a child.
Thou art come from Hell most wild;
Thou the awful lake dost see
Where souls wail eternally;
And dependent from thy wrist
Are the judgment scales.
—O hist,
It is somewhere in the sacred tales
Thou wert guardian to my Jesus small.
When He cradled in a stall
Thou didst hold Him safe within the rails;
From the murderer beguiled,
From the adder, from the brook,
Thou didst shield Him: it may be
Thou didst guide Him to His Mother's knee,
When too far He dreamed in mountain-nook.
Egypt, with its demon-gods in bales,
And its sphinxes of the mighty fist,

131

Thou didst lead the little One among,
And protected Him from wrong,
Who was but a child.
Dread St. Michael, whose I am!
Save me from the fiends that damn—
So persuasive and so meek,
I may almost touch thy cheek—
Save me, so thy power with God prevails!