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 | The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere |  |
How unlike these
That youthful priest, angelic more than priestly,
Nepotian! Standing in the imperial court
He wore the hair-cloth hid. A soldier once
A soldier's simpleness was in him ever;
He was the outcast's help, the orphan's hope,
The strength of all the oppressed. Like pure, cold airs
Launched from white peaks on one that tracks hot sands
The casual thought of him had power to cheer me.
Once more I see him with that child-like smile
Brightening his grave and sacerdotal stillness;
Each holy widow ‘Mother’ still he called,
Each maiden ‘Sister.’ With what care he clothed
His own high thoughts in garb of teachers old:
‘Saint Irenæus; Cyprian hints—’
Shunning all self-assertion! Ah! great God!
That lily, which the right hand of Thy pureness
Had shaped to be an image of itself,
Struck by the noontide ardours, drooped, and died!
‘I shall have letters from him soon,’ I mused:
A stranger entered, sad of face: he laid
A young priest's garment on an old man's knee;
He spake: ‘Nepotian sent it thee in death;
“Tell him that by God's altar day by day
This was my tunic as I ministered.”’
Paula, since then it lies athwart this couch:
Spread it above me dead.
That youthful priest, angelic more than priestly,
Nepotian! Standing in the imperial court
He wore the hair-cloth hid. A soldier once
A soldier's simpleness was in him ever;
He was the outcast's help, the orphan's hope,
The strength of all the oppressed. Like pure, cold airs
Launched from white peaks on one that tracks hot sands
The casual thought of him had power to cheer me.
Once more I see him with that child-like smile
Brightening his grave and sacerdotal stillness;
Each holy widow ‘Mother’ still he called,
Each maiden ‘Sister.’ With what care he clothed
His own high thoughts in garb of teachers old:
‘Saint Irenæus; Cyprian hints—’
182
That lily, which the right hand of Thy pureness
Had shaped to be an image of itself,
Struck by the noontide ardours, drooped, and died!
‘I shall have letters from him soon,’ I mused:
A stranger entered, sad of face: he laid
A young priest's garment on an old man's knee;
He spake: ‘Nepotian sent it thee in death;
“Tell him that by God's altar day by day
This was my tunic as I ministered.”’
Paula, since then it lies athwart this couch:
Spread it above me dead.
| The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere | |