The Sanctuary :: :: University of Virginia Library

Sister of Scotland! lift thy grief-worn face,
Arise, courageous be;
Not gloom alone, but glory marks the trace
Stern archives bear of thee;
Of old, quiescence for thy strength has been,—
But now, awake! and thrill the world's great scene.

222

Widow'd of pomp and shorn of stately power
Thy mitred Fathers are;
But He, who seal'd with sanctifying dower
Their consecration-prayer,
Still to the church of Caledonia's clime
Grants the true wealth of apostolic time,—

A creed of principle! that Christ-born Thing
With prowess calm and high,
Which baffles hate and all harsh tyrants bring
Fierce zeal to crucify:—
True to God's covenant, thy martyr'd soul
Faced the dread anguish, and absorb'd the whole.

Thine was a trial, worse than battle-shock
Like what Culloden saw;
E'en the slow waste of man's consuming mock,—
The bane and blight of Law,
Whose with'ring cruelty of cold disdain
Frets a fine spirit more than martyr's chain.

For oh, when Persecution's rage appears
In faggot, blood, and fire,
Religion watches through applauding tears
Faith's hero thus expire:
Such death is grandeur; and each dying tone
For truth becomes an everlasting throne.

But, Scotland's Church in silent meekness bore
Her pangs of buried grief;
Unlike false Zeal which took the field of yore
And fought for stern-relief;
Wearied and worn, in exile far away,
She wept, and worshipp'd in that awful day!

Yet, not for Her hath poet struck the lyre
Pure martyrdom to praise;
Battle and blood can pæans loud inspire,
But none could anguish raise,—
Voiceless, intense, when hearts with pangs were wrung,
By angels number'd, though by bards unsung.

223

Sister of Scotland! 'twas indeed an hour
Of agony and gloom,—
Erastian hate and antichristian power
Yearn'd to contrive a tomb,
Where Church and Cross and sacramental Rite
Should bear the blast of persecuting might.

Then, was thy triumph! when thy Prelates stood,
And drank the cup of woe:—
Imprison'd, faint, in widowhood
Thou didst not faith forego,
But, bind the Cross still closer to thy breast,
And follow paths a Saviour's feet had press'd.

For this, both Time and Truth shall laurel thee
With wreaths of more than glory;
And creedless Legislation blush to see
The brand she wears in story,—
Dreaming that mortal power a Church can make,
And what Christ founded, impious Falsehood shake!

E'en now may pilgrims from their southern home
In glens of Scotland find
Symbols and signs, where'er they haply roam,
Which bring that age to mind
When fierceness, clad in Cameronian form,
Yell'd in the fray, and rous'd the bloody storm.

Altar and Temple, plunder'd, rent, defiled,
The scatter'd flock no more,—
Bann'd from their soil, went husband, wife, and child
To seek an alien-shore:
While oft beneath the cutting winds of heaven
Some infant to the Saviour's arms was given.

“Cast down, but not destroy'd,” thou still art left
Shrine of the hoary Past!
Changeless in creed, although of power bereft
By persecution's blast:
And time-worn prayer-books by their tear-marks tell,—
The hearts they solaced, learn'd to love them well.

224

When Albion in barbaric darkness lay
Cover'd with pagan-cloud,
Thy sea-girt convent sent the primal ray
Which broke Northumbria's shroud;—
O'er Dane and Saxon pour'd celestial light
And saved half Europe from sepulchral night.

That wave-rock'd nursling of the Hebrides
Whence thy first Abbot came,
Hath islanded with grace the northern seas,
And fill'd with more than fame
The sacred gloom of that monastic Shrine,
Where still some halo from the past is thine.

Like wrecks of glory, mute and mournful fade
Cathedral tower and spire;
And calm dejection haunts each cloister-glade
Where rose the pealing quire:—
Tombs of dead ages, thus thine Abbeys stand
Whose very ruins consecrate a land!

Sister of Scotland! lift thy grief-worn face,
In Christ victorious be;
Not gloom alone, but glory tracks the trace
Stern archives bear of thee:
Bid temples rise, and shrines of prayer abound
Where ancient Faith with martyr-wreaths was crown'd.