A Mirror of Faith :: :: University of Virginia Library

They tell us that the Lord of Hosts
will not avenge His Own:
They tell us that He careth not
for temples overthrown:
Go! look through England's thousand vales,
and shew me, he that may,
The Abbey lands that have not wrought
their owner's swift decay.

2

Ill hands are on the Abbey Church;
they batter down the Nave:
They strip the lead, they spoil the dead,
they violate the grave;
Where once with penitential tears
full many a cheek was wet,
There thou carousest in thy halls,
Protector Somerset!

3

Look to the scaffold, reared on high,
the sawdust, block, and steel!
Look to the prisoner, wan of face,
that turns him there to kneel:
Hark to the muffled bell that calls
that bloody sight to see:
Earl Hertford, Duke of Somerset!
the summons is for thee!

4

Thou thought'st no blame, thou felt'st no shame,
to spoil S. Pancras' shrine:
His Sussex woods, his Lewes fields,
were all a prey of thine;
Thou dravest forth the monks at large,
and mad'st their wail thy mock;
Ho! Thomas, Baron Cornwall!
prepare thee for the block!

5

The curses of the holy walls,
where men of God have been,
Are loud against thee, Suffolk's duke,
and cry from plundered Shene;

They urge thee up the scaffold steps,
and bloody is their speed;
They call thee to the Judgment-seat,
to answer for the deed!

6

Lord Falkland! thy ancestral crimes
must fall upon thy head:
S. Alban's Curse at Newbury
prepares thy bloody bed;
Lord Stafford, innocent in vain!
the snare is round thee set:
Lord Russell! stoop thee to the axe,
for Woburn claims her debt.

7

Go up to Reading,—ask if that
hath wrought its owner's woe;
Go stand in Valle Crucis Nave,
and weep o'er sweet Rievaulx;
From Tavistock to Lindisfarne
one cry thine ear shall greet;
Blood hath had blood, and spoil had spoil,
till vengeance is complete!