Fifty of the Protestant Ballads :: :: University of Virginia Library

By music, first, attract their ears and hearts,
Bass, tenor, alto, set and sung in parts;
What matter, though no spirit's praise be there?
Chaunting is only modulated air;
The crowd will come to listen, not to pray,—
So drill your choristers by night and day.

Next, painting: decorate these paltry fanes,
By base churchwardens whitewashed with such pains;
Gilding and colours, reds and greens and blues,
And windows, staining daylight to all hues,
Corona, carvings—(idols by-and-by)—
These be your second aim, to please the eye;
What tho' such sights distract the soul from prayer?
The crowd will come, at any rate to stare.

Then flowers—O yes! we win the women thus
How charmingly young sisters flock to us!
And with what zeal their wreaths and texts are set,
Where curates are strict celibates—as yet;

100

So every festal season hung in flowers
Shall make dull churches smile like Paphian bowers,
And, if religion look forgotten so,
What matter? crowds will come, to see the show.

But chiefest this, the point of all, shrewd priest;
Make a dread mystery that simple feast
Which early Christians knew for bread and wine
Tasted in memory of their Lord divine,
—Unconsecrated,—He gave thanks, and brake,
And bade them take it for His own dear sake.
Bread?—it is flesh!—not wine, it is the Blood!
The priest's bare word creates a Present God!
Not reverence only, superstitious care
Must watch and worship every morsel there;
Incense and vestments, noon-day flaring lights,
And early papal—earlier pagan—rites,
Preach up all these; and bid the people press
For absolution, will they but confess;
And make them sure this wafer with this cup
Washes all guilt away and wipes it up;
Provided only, creeping to their priest,
(Who gives them God-in-sacrifice for feast,)
They humbly tell him all the sins they've done,
And he is willing to forgive each one!

So, English clergy!—(not to be too long,
And not intending all, for that were wrong,)—
Acutely step by step advancing thus,
And luring the lay-folk to lean on us,

101

We shall, O glorious! soon set England free
From—civil and religious liberty!
Her Hanoverian throne shall no more bind
Protestant errors on the British mind;
Her people shall not dare to learn or teach
Except as Holy Church is pleased to preach;
And all our morals, all our light, at home
Shall rival light and morals as in Rome,—
While England's present peace and future hope
Must cling,—O praise!—to our “Lord God the Pope!”