Matin Bells and Scarlet and Gold :: :: University of Virginia Library

I have praised the Lord with singing, I have praised the Master long,
For the Sabbath bells kept ringing in my heart to evensong,
While I waged a war with evils in high places and the shrine
And the errors that like weevils sapt the core of things Divine.
Ah, I hated graven images unto which poor dupes knelt down,
And had many goodly scrimmages with the Scarlet Woman's gown
Till I tore away the mummery that had hid the hateful lie
And exposed the foolish flummery by which kings and peoples die;
And beneath the mitre's jewel I laid bare the falsehood foul
Like a crawling serpent cruel, and the satyr's monkish cowl
Could not veil from me the leering eyes and fat voluptuous lips—
Yea, I checked their proud careering when I smote with words like whips.

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Once I went for a black-letter cheat with round and rosy face,
Who was but a snare and fetter with his hypocrite's grimace,
To idolators and actors all deluded by the paint
Which might mimic benefactors, but could never make a saint;
He was done upon a panel, that looked like a tavern board,
And esteemed a holy channel for the blessings of the Lord;
For the votaries before him bowed and kissed his sinful feet,
And they quarrelled to adore him in the temple and the street.
So I girded me for battle, and I chose me goodly stones
Which were sharp for Romish cattle and the idols set on thrones,
While the spirit on my spare bones breathed the victory of trust,
And I fearless Praise-God-Barebones ground the bauble into dust.

I break the coloured windows with their harlotries or hue,
And the Papists looked like Hindoos when I scourged them black and blue;
For I had the zeal of Jael, and my hand was Jehu's sword,
When he slew the priests of Baal for the honour of the Lord.
And the Dagons from their niches, lo, I tumbled without heed
Into fragments with their riches that had made their thousands bleed
And ten thousand to perdition turned from pastures fair and green,
With their solemn superstition the more dread because unseen.

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I defaced the tinsel wrappings, and in ruin wrote my name
On the borrowed plumes and trappings which they flaunted to their shame;
And I gloried in corrections, and with glee my missiles cast
At their Romish resurrections, as God's own iconoclast.
I have stabled my stout horses where His liegemen kept no troth
With the Christ in loud divorces, and now worshipt Ashtaroth,
In the fanes where gods were coffered and they bowed to scraps of bread
And the sacrifice was offered and the heathen table spread.
Then I trampled on the altars and the conjurors' vile tricks,
While my beasts trailed loose their halters over shattered candlesticks
And the incense lampand censer and the mockery of light
Which left darkness only denser and proclaimed the heathen night.
I defiled the idol vessels wherein wickedness was wrought,
And had many righteous wrestles with the foes who vainly fought;
For like iron were my spare bones, and as Samson burst the cords,
And I was but Praise-God-Barebones, and the battle was the Lord's.

There is scarce a fane in Merry England where my judgment mark
Has not graved a witness very clear athwart each pagan ark,
If it guarded not the living oracles of truth and God
And the gravings were thanksgiving for the strength that by me trod.
For my heart was sound and human and my heart was not my own,

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While I loathed the Scarlet Woman and the tares that she had sown
In the wheat by her adultery and among our choicest fields
With no niggard or desultory hand for bitter harvest yields.
I was to my Maker married, and for him strove sternly on
And with Him I spoiled and harried the fleshpots of Babylon;
As in penance without pity I descended on the vice,
And from country shades and city rose the solemn sacrifice.
Ah, a pure and pleasant savour smelled the Lord when all the blood
Of the foes who scorned His favour was shed in no stinted flood,
While the Smithfield fires and faggots took in turn their carnival
On the Roman moths and maggots who had held high festival.
And I knew no paltry truckling for old principles and names,
When I cast the babe and suckling with their parents to the flames,
And I drowned their puling voices and compassion that would stay
In the rapture that rejoices and the psalms that bid us slay.
I was ever first to kindle the brave spark's avenging scourge,
And to feed if it should dwindle the good bonfires that would purge;
Though they also scorched my spare bones and whatever taint lurked in,
But scotched never Praise-God-Barebones, who was spared to spare not sin.

But I could not see the lighting of a candle or a cross,
Without hands that itched for fighting and to purify the dross;

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And a missal or a relic or a musty-fusty bone
Made my feelings un-angelic and my bosom hard as stone.
Aye, a sculpture or the gilding of a Jezebel or shrine
And the frescoes on a building that degraded the Divine,
And the virgins that had nothing of the glory but the name
With their poor pretence at clothing and a fig-leaf and their shame,
And an aureole or nimbus round some never-living saint
Or a daubing of some limbus fatuorum in red paint,
All awoke in me a jealous passion for insulted God
While they nerved my arm to zealous reckoning with torch or rod.
O I was not one who tasted only wrath and then would cease,
But I smashed the idols basted with their own hot candle grease
And I brayed them into powder, as did Moses with the calf—
While uplifting praises louder, for I did not ought by half—
And I mixed it with the sweeping of the cloister and the sink,
In a cup of woe and weeping for idolators to drink.
And I burnt a holy feather from the wing of Gabriel
With the priest and goose together, and I stood as sentinel;
I was filled with righteous anger and consumed by pious wrath,
At the lies and godless languor of the pilgrims on their path,
When I fasted in my spare bones though they grew so fat and kicked
At the fare of “Praise-God-Barebones” and their dainty dishes licked.

If I suffered much, yet over all my perils in the end
Did I triumph with Jehovah as my Captain and my Friend.

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For He shielded me and shattered by my arm that was His tool
Enemies and ills, and scattered the proud scorners and the school
Of the wisdom turned to water and the strength that proved but weak
When the Lord arose to slaughter and in thunder came to speak.
Then the mockers were as stubble, and the majesty of man
Just a breath or passing bubble in His universal plan.
Though behind the cart-tail haltered I was dragged and stoned and scourged,
At my pangs I never faltered, if the wicked round me surged
In a bloody sea of sorrow with the mire of sin they cast,
For I knew the judgment morrow must be victory at last.
I was but at best God's little mortal weapon, great in trust,
To show earthly pomp was brittle and restrain the pride of lust.
So He used me to His glory for a year or for a day
On a service grim and gory when His vengeance had its way,
Or to be His chosen trumpet of the Truth and gather home
The poor outcast and the strumpet in His mercy's boundless dome.
And if sometimes in divining His decrees I read amiss
He would plunge me in refining furnaces or shame's abyss,
Or on whetstones of affliction sharpen me to finer point
And with trouble's benediction my unworthy head anoint,
And yet humble more my spare bones or a season lay aside
To lift higher “Praise-God-Barebones” though blasphemers should deride.

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I had holy recreation still as one of the elect
When we talked Predestination, but as man to man erect,
With the sword and with the battle and the arguments of steel
And the iron rain and rattle which all heretics could feel.
Though I liked a godly sermon with a loud and lusty roll
When the text like dew of Hermon came refreshing to the soul,
And stout doctrine was expounded (while my hand condensed a fist)
Till the sinner sank confounded by some stalwart Calvinist,
As he piled up proof on reason and with scripture clenched it all
Against tenets that were treason to the God of John and Paul,
With his many points and “lastly” after three hours at a stretch
While he showed the Word was vastly more than any impious wretch
With his candlesticks and crotchet and the Fathers and the Church
Which had truth but strove to botch it and left starvelings in the lurch;
When the Spirit breathed in power on the erring and the lost,
And we had a heavenly shower like the fall of Pentecost.
O the vestures and the cassock which they borrowed right from Rome,
Could not save them from the hassock which I fulminated home
When my orthodox emotions craved an outlet and redress,
If I found the false devotions of mere superstitiousness.
I would keep a sound theology at whatever risk or price,
With fierce fractions for apology of the Roman sacrifice;

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And however hurt, my spare bones were as ready as before
At the bid of “Praise-God-Barebones” to destroy or to adore.

No one heard the worldly laughter of transgressors on my lips,
When the hope of the hereafter with its wholesome sad eclipse
Filled my breast with sacred glowing and a reverent great calm
Like a fountain overflowing, that inspired each act or psalm.
From the carnal earth confusements I abstained with rigid zeal
And I gat no fit amusements save in testimony's seal,
When the passion of the martyrs spurred my spirit and defied
Thrones and thunders, lords and garters, and aloud I testified.
For my pleasures all were serious, I rejoiced in prayer and praise
And religious joys mysterious which might quicken and upraise
Soul and conscience to the summit of the loftiest life, and sound
Deeps that never mortal plummet could attain or yet had found.
But the thought of execution, when the rebels and their hoard
Met with righteous retribution at the coming of the Lord
And the spoiler bowed to capture and false prophets went to doom,
Was to me a thought of rapture and it glorified the gloom.
O the bliss of just damnation for all men, except the few
Who from tears and tribulation in the fire were born anew,

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Was the meat that always nourished me beneath the cross of care;
And though unbelievers flourished and believers had no share
In the prizes and the portions which in malediction fell,
When I pictured their contortions and their agonies in hell,
I waxed merry and my spare bones danced to echoes of their groans
And the heart of “Praise-God-Barebones” found sweet music in their moans.

I have lived in many ages, but I never would recant
And am proud of all the stages I have striven as Protestant,
With my principles of rigour and the true celestial seeds
Which inspired unearthly vigour in the dead and dying creeds.
I have guided glorious factions as a counsellor and friend,
Through the predetermined actions to the predetermined end,
While I made and unmade history in the dungeon and the stocks
And from Rome's accursèd mystery tore the veil and opened locks;
To let in the air of freedom and let out the poison breath,
That the Lord might reign in Edom and the palaces of death
And lose nought of the fair total of His righteous dues and laud,
When I crushed the sacerdotal arm and tyranny of fraud.
And though one in a minority, Athanasius-like I stood
In the battle with authority for the scriptural and good—
For our liberties' fruition, and the conscience and the man,

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Against churches and tradition and the Pope and priestly ban;
And though pilloried and branded, and with mutilated flesh
Under torture single-handed I have died; I rose afresh
From the unreleasing portal of the tomb that burst for me,
Who for ever was immortal, and for ever more will be.
Call me fanatic, dissenter, or a ranting, canting knave,
Stone me, burn me, I re-enter the old world if through the grave;
But to triumph in my spare bones over error and its spell,
And to heap as “Praise-God-Barebones” yet more hecatombs in hell.