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The Baptistery, or the way of eternal life

By the author of "The Cathedral." [i.e. Isaac Williams] A new edition

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IMAGE THE ELEVENTH. Religious Retreats.
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IMAGE THE ELEVENTH. Religious Retreats.

I.

Ye holy Virgins who have ta'en your stand
Without the heavenly gate,
With your lamps burning in your hand,
And for the Bridegroom's coming wait;
With midnight chaunt and holy hymn
Numbering night's waning watches evermore,
Till the Great Morning shall appear.
And when the starry sentinels grow dim
Your waning lamps ye trim,
With silence and with self-communing fear,
Or oft-returning Litanies.
While thus ye imitate the peaceful skies,
And stillness of the eternal spheres,
Beyond the noise of mortal years,
The eternal Bridegroom gives His love to know,
Disclosing more His awe-inspiring brow.

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II.

I too would to your cloistral gate repair,
And list without upon the iron stair,
Till something I may catch of sounds of Heaven,
And thoughts of wisdom which to you are given.

III.

Whether in silence and apart ye dwell
In solitary cell,
As Adam, when pure Eden first he trod,
Or as the second Adam in the wild,
Or Moses on Mount Sinai hid with God,
Or with Elijah, the stern desert's child,
To hear the still small voice by mountain cave,
Or Cherith's hallow'd wave;
Or knit together in chaste companies,
With order and obedience, Heaven's first law,
Which in their courses keeps the starry skies,
Acknowledging with downcast looks of awe
The presence of the Invisible.
Or at the midnight lamp of sacred lore
Your vigils pale the Church's walls explore,
Or build her fallen citadel.
Or in the genial light of other suns,
And bent on other gain,
Ye tend the bed of pain,
The orphan clothe, with love parental train
Christ's little ones,
Daily in heavenly wisdom growing wise
By unbought ministries,
Like gentle-handed Angels all unknown,
And then most nigh when men seem most alone.

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IV.

Thus as from mortal joys ye heavenward steal,
Unloos'd from earth's more tender charities,
Christ, true to His sure promise, doth reveal
Manifold more e'en here beneath the skies,
Drawing more near as ye from earth arise.
Whether it be in thoughts to silence given
As ye approach to Heaven,
Ye something gain of the deep calm of even,
Which tuneth all your senses into peace;
Or that the soul, when sensual trammels cease,
Her home and haven finds, and is at rest,
Of the heart's fitful fever dispossess'd.
Doubtless full sore the struggle, long the strife,
While the old Adam and the Eve within,
From out their prison bars and thoughtful cell,
(As first to close around you they begin,)
Look'd forth upon the charms of earthly life;
Thence driven the more in things unseen to dwell,
Ye found your solace, strength, and hidden well;—
While worldly yearnings urg'd you to repair
To seek your home in prayer;—
Sinking no more in dull vacuity,
Ye could look forth and see with placid eye
The visions of the world in quiet die;
And while the golden landscape seem'd to fade
With the departing day,
Turn'd to your cloistral shade,
To commune with realities on high,—
More keenly to your eyesight coming nigh,—
Till the day break and shadows flee away.

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V.

And haply long the toil your chains to wear,
Until your earthly turn'd to heavenly care;
Care, man's companion and best friend below,
Must daily cleanse the path whereon we go;
For healthful joy must be of sorrow born,
And night below precede the morn.
No shining houses here, no dainty furniture,
No tables spread with wines and costly fare,
No gentle couches which allure
Sin-laden souls to breathe the air
Of thoughtlessness and dream secure.
Pain-loving duties hold their daily round
With diet spare, hard couch, and slumbers light,
That wake to keep the watches of the night,
And even dreams obedient found.
And keener than hard rule I deem the warfare strong
With secret sorrows which to you belong,
Ere ye have calm'd the eye of sense
To that pale brow that loves the ground,
And steps that walk so near the earth,
Familiar with stern Abstinence,
Whence heavenly Graces have their birth.

VI.

Yea, dearer far I deem your sorrows,
Than all delight the youthful fancy borrows
Wherewith to fill the haunts of your retreat;
Sorrow hath here below a deeper seat,
Hath sterner power the heart to move,
And knit the cords round all we love,
Than all the joys which by us fleet.

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The dearest things to which we turn and sigh,
Which memory brings,
The dearest scenes and times gone by,—
Part of ourselves to which our being clings,
And last from our deep bosoms torn,—
Are those by sorrow mark'd most deep.
For man must heavenward walk and weep,
And comforted of God are they that mourn.
Nay, if the love of you my bosom steeps,
Ye blest retreats and homes of piety,
If at your thoughts my spirit's hidden deeps
Are stirr'd within to purpose high,
Longings with you to live and die,
'Tis for your sorrows, deeply bred
By scanty board and iron bed,
Which seek release
And bind you to your God in peace.

VII.

“Prisoners of hope,” nurs'd by stern discipline,
'Mid awful modesties of love divine,
Seeking the shade with downcast pallid face,
The loves of sordid sense no more ye move,
Turning your earthly to Angelic grace;
But as ye pass and hide from earthly love,
Labour stands still, and heaves the deep-drawn sigh,
With you, though loath to live, yet glad to die.
Nor all in vain, for thence
Are bred within, in lonely hours to rise,
Loathings of self, heart-stirrings, grave and wise,
More than by all the preacher's eloquence,
Shot from your face severe and downcast eyes.

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VIII.

Sweet cloistral homes, to love of virtue given,
Which speak unseen realities,
And seem like fortresses of viewless skies,
Or like a stair connecting earth with Heaven,
Diffusing all around a secret sense
Of chastity and prayer and abstinence!
How do your relics still from shore to shore
Live on, and speak the holy things of yore,
Marks of an heavenward pilgrimage,—
Abbey and priory, with ivy green,
Mantling the sacred window half unseen,
Ye seem to plead against an evil age,
Stern witnesses of holier heritage.
And where your wrecks are seen no more,
Your sacred names live on, and hallow still
Full many a vale retir'd and desert hill,
Shadows of refuge on the barren moor,
Or spire-ennobled plain.
Still your calm Shade o'er sacred Oxford throws
The holy mantle of a dread repose,
Nursing whate'er of good doth still remain.

IX.

Like pillars of the Church they stood
Through all the peopled land, a guardian multitude,
And shut out climbing cares of wealth and pride,
Unmeet with penitential sorrows to abide,
Where want alone could find the open door,—
Embosom'd amid mountains standing nigh,
Or by the wide and solitary shore.
Such Tintern's holy shade on winding Wye,

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Or tree-girt Netley from the inland tide
Seen fair, as summer vessels downward glide;
Or Royal Ina's venerated pile
Nam'd from the glassy Isle;
Or Abbey Crucis, which with ruin'd walls
The spirit of the past around her calls.
And e'en to later evil years
Gidding of honour'd name the witness bears;
Seen 'mid the Church's wreck to stand
Holding the Virgin lamp with an unwavering hand.
And thou too in that Saintly band,
Not least though last,
May all good Angels upon thee attend,
Daily companion once, now absent friend!
Still may I on our race divine
Find in thine orisons a place, as thou in mine,
And sit beneath thy feet when all is past!

X.

E'en such of yore, beyond the distant hill,
The tabernacles of the Saints were found,
Far from all earthly sound,
But that of whispering grove and flowing rill,
And birds of happy note when all is still.
There rich and princely men had laid aside
The trappings of their pride,
And Eden open'd in the desert rude.
Ambition, Avarice, and Pomp of life
Ne'er look'd upon their solitude:
Their emulation and their mutual strife,
Each to abase himself in lowly love,
And gain the praise of God above.

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Riches they found in love of poverty,
And as they daily learn'd to die,
Nourish'd the better life of immortality.
The grove melodious and the whispering tree,
The torrent in its mountain fall,
They, like the birds of air, their own might call;
Still less possessing they attain the more,
For all is theirs in still increasing store,
As they were Christ's and learn'd His lore.
His sun and moon did seem to stand
With their celestial band,
And, like aerial sentinels,
To keep their watch around their Heaven-protected cells .

XI.

As from a world hid in the sky
To wondering men came forth the saintly Antony;
Where communing with Heaven alone
Such speaking grace his face had won,
That hearts were changed which had beheld him nigh;
In silence and in solitude
His prayers attain'd such power of good,
That all aghast the wondering Age
Heard of the marvels wrought in his lone hermitage.
Withdrawn from sight and things of men,
He vision gain'd, with undisturbèd ken,
To view the struggles of the world that lies
Around in dread realities,
For us contending, while of such we little deem,
Or think it but a dream.

126

XII.

Thus he who sought from men to hide,
And dwell with God on the lone mountain side,
Hath to all lands spread his renown,
As streams from hidden grove through peopled realms run down.
Then Egypt woke from life divine,
Which cradled Christ of yore,
And peopled Holy Palestine
With brotherhood and cells of sacred lore;
Light through the east begins to burn and shine.
So did the Saint in solitary grove
Draw all the world with him above,
By self-renouncing sterner rules
More than the pulpit and the schools;—
With Saints that walk around the Virgin-born
In the bright Gospel morn.
Thence princely-hearted Athanase,
Thence too great Austin, like the stricken deer,
Drank deep the love of Heaven in penitential ways.
Sacred retreats! in darkness and in fear
Ye speak of friendly hosts encamping near,
Like beacons which on mountain summits blaze;
Kindling a fire in Christendom,
Which onward burns unto the day of doom.

XIII.

Such Basil's Pontic home in holier time,
Hedg'd by the mountain wilderness,
And beautiful in nature's stern undress,
Teaching simplicity and faith, sublime

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In very nakedness;
While far behind the hanging woodlands climb,
Studded with roaring waterfalls,
Which gather in repose beneath their feet;
And there, below that saintly calm retreat,
The cataract, with foaming walls,
To the dark solitudes more loudly calls.

XIV.

Beasts of the wild, with horned heads uprais'd,
On the new dwellers of the forest gaz'd;
Lo! Jerome's gentle lion crouching nigh,
And bolder antler'd guest of silent Antony:
Such wondrous power hath holy Innocence
To shield, and guard, nor needs partition fence,
Since man, with inmates of the forest wild,
Was in the second Adam reconcil'd.

XV.

Thus reconcil'd in peace they grow
With beasts that are below;
And reconcil'd with Angel choirs above,
While thus they imitate their ways,
In peace, and prayer, and praise:
In peace with God and man, and patient love.
Upon their quiet solitude,
Or silence-loving haunts of pensive brotherhood,
By water, mount, or wood,
No noise of human strife came near:
They in their hardy homes still year by year,
By use made doubly dear,

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Wean'd from its cares and vanities,
Anticipate the happier skies
Wherein their kingdom lies.

XVI.

Surely if scenes on earth be known,
Which Angels love to haunt and prize,
As spots that are most like their own,
'Tis in those meek societies,
Whose cloistral walls the fancy bar,
And shut out busy sounds of earth afar,
Of strife, of tumult, and of war;
E'en like a sheltering citadel
Against surrounding arts of hell;
Or like a temple, rampart crown'd,
Upon whose battlements in heavenly ground
Angels and happy spirits singing go;
While from the courts of prayer below
Blend with their songs the sounds of penitential woe.

XVII.

Avaunt, ye thoughts of evil and unrest,
Let nothing here intrude
To ruffle or to soil the virgin breast,
Of Heav'n-retiring solitude!
Keep all without the news of passing time,
Where tales of pestilential ways that lead to crime,
Like incense to the evil spirit rise,
And darken all the skies.

129

XVIII.

Avaunt, dark Superstition with thy brood,
Hence to the haunted caves of some black Indian wood!
For much I deem the sin is darkest found
Which lifts its head on holy ground;
'Tis writ that Satan, in the peopled skies,
Came 'mid those blest societies:
And 'mid that holiest band, where Christ on earth was seen,
Did Judas intervene.
Yet nathless never yet hath mortal eye
Beheld more blessed company,
Than that, when to the Twelve the bread of life was given,
And Jesus spake of love and Heaven;
No crown 'mid men so blest, as to have stood
Amid that chosen brotherhood.

XIX.

Hail, Kings and Saints, to wisdom's heights retir'd,
With love of virtue fir'd,
I deem ye wise, who bid the world farewell,
With fast and vigil and the saintly cell
For this short life to dwell;—
A better resurrection to obtain,
And treasure in the Heavens abiding gain,—
To put Christ's words to proof, of gifts sublime,
With pledge and earnest in this present time!

130

And haply thus from worldly hopes withdrawn
Ye clearer view the eternal dawn,
And in your stillness hear the immortal chime,
That holds the universal choirs above;
So that your steps to their obedience move,
And in that music all your thoughts are love.
Till as ye nearer draw to life's dark close
Your purer thoughts are still'd to that repose
Which is in Heaven;
While life as fast it wanes, yet younger grows
In hopes of immortality to meekness given.

XX.

I know not if 'tis well to string the heart
In solitude to take her part,
Or silence, which is peopled solitude;
I know not if 'tis good.
But this I know, to give up all
Which here on earth men treasure call,
With firm resolve to bid depart
Home ties, with earthly promise rife,
And things that lie most near the human heart;—
To spend the days of this short life
In prayers, and alms, and charities,
This in its fulness daily is to store,
For ever more and more,
Where nothing dies.
 

The account in this Stanza is taken from a beautiful passage in St. Chrysostom. In Matt. Hom. lxxiii.