 | The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere |  |
'Twas well no doubt my earliest effort failed:
It humbled me. To Friesland I had gone;
Later I passed to Rome: a Roman noble
Showed me its pagan glories. What were they?
The sum of all that virtue counts for naught;
That Faith esteems as loss. A nightmare 'twas,
A bad man's wickedest dream—such dream as stands
Near him, belike, death past, his destined penance
In bodiless worlds where sin is known as sin.
From trophies of proud wrong to them I fled
The houses of Cecilia and Prassedé
Churches full fair this day. Awe-struck I bent,
O'er that black vault, the dread Mamertine prison,
Where sat of old Saint Peter and Saint Paul
In silence side by side. Three months I dwelt
In that metropolis of the Christian world.
Three times that later Gregory then the Pope
Probed me with searching question of the Faith;
Next he ordained me Bishop; smiling, last,
He changed my name to Boniface from Winfred,
And bade me to the heathen. I made vow
To guard Christ's Faith from wrong, His Church from schism;
Can he love Christ who little loves His Church?
The scroll whereon that vow was writ I laid
Upon Saint Peter's tomb.
It humbled me. To Friesland I had gone;
Later I passed to Rome: a Roman noble
Showed me its pagan glories. What were they?
The sum of all that virtue counts for naught;
That Faith esteems as loss. A nightmare 'twas,
A bad man's wickedest dream—such dream as stands
Near him, belike, death past, his destined penance
In bodiless worlds where sin is known as sin.
From trophies of proud wrong to them I fled
The houses of Cecilia and Prassedé
Churches full fair this day. Awe-struck I bent,
O'er that black vault, the dread Mamertine prison,
Where sat of old Saint Peter and Saint Paul
In silence side by side. Three months I dwelt
In that metropolis of the Christian world.
Three times that later Gregory then the Pope
219
Next he ordained me Bishop; smiling, last,
He changed my name to Boniface from Winfred,
And bade me to the heathen. I made vow
To guard Christ's Faith from wrong, His Church from schism;
Can he love Christ who little loves His Church?
The scroll whereon that vow was writ I laid
Upon Saint Peter's tomb.
| The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere | |