University of Virginia Library

SIXTEENTH CENTURY.

High swoln with pride of birth and undisputed sway,
Eighth Harry yet aspired to bear the schoolman's palm away;
Rome's self-elected champion, bold Luther he reviled,
And by her grateful pontiff was “The Faith's Defender” styled;
But, thwarted in the hope of freedom from his vows
To Katharine of Aragon, his first and lawful spouse,
Turn'd rebel to his church, the papal power defied,
Pull'd Wolsey down, divorced his queen, and crown'd his chosen bride.
Yet 'twas no “gospel light that beam'd from Anna's eyes,”
Nor blind self-will, nor stubborn pride, e'er made a monarch wise,
And England's church, at length from Rome's corruptions freed,
Might blush to own so foul a source for her regenerate creed.
Then ancient abbeys mourn'd their rifled cloisters void,
Their lands to new possessors pass'd, and holiest shrines destroy'd.
Rapacious courtiers shared whate'er the monarch's hand
In mad profusion scatter'd o'er the desecrated land.
Then stream'd the headsman's axe with blood of richest dye;
More, Fisher, Cromwell, fell to glut a jealous tyrant's eye:
Two queens beneath it bled; by guilt or slander stain'd;
Two queens divorced; one died; and one, though doom'd to die, remain'd.
These gallant Surrey follow'd: at last, in Forty-seven,
The pamper'd king was call'd to meet the just award of heaven.
Jane Seymour's only son—the tyrant's best loved queen—
Edward, at ten years old, succeeds, and dies ere yet sixteen.
Age ripe enough the germ of inward worth to scan,
And from the promise of the boy, predict the future man.
For learning's envied prize was to his youth assign'd,
And early discipline improved the virtues of his mind.
Then great Protector Somerset, with Cranmer's aid,
The church new modell'd, and complete the Reformation made;
Tho' Gardiner, with savage Bonner link'd, oppose,
While, for their ancient faith array'd, the murmuring Commons rose.
Great Somerset pull'd down, and pious Edward dead,
Mary, as Henry's eldest born, was rightful queen instead;
But for her faith profess'd in Romish tenets known,
Found fierce rebellion arm'd to guard the passage to the throne.
With Dudley Grey combined, their sordid end to gain,
Set up a claimant to the crown in poor devoted Jane;
Proclaim'd, abandon'd, left to pay the traitor's due,
The fairest, gentlest victim stern ambition ever slew.
Now mass again was said thro' all the darken'd isle;
The holy rood again was seen in every sainted pile;
And sacring bells were rung, and holy water shed,
And consecrated tapers hung around the dying bed.
Too blest, had superstition no worse designs embraced,
When Pole for toleration sued, and Heaven his pleading graced.
But bigotry prevail'd, and persecution fann'd
The flames of glorious martyrdom that sanctified the land.
Then Hooper, Ridley, Latimer, the compact seal'd,
And Cranmer burn'd the recreant hand that once was known to yield.
In pitiless resolve, the gloomy queen survey'd,
With Philip, her yet darker spouse, the waste her edicts made;
Beheld how fruitless all—then, sullenly, to fate
Resign'd her fond, deluded soul. She died in Fifty-eight.
Elizabeth—the third, and last surviving flower
Of Henry's royal stem, now quits, compell'd, her maiden bower;
Fair Boleyn's only child, the new religion's pride,
Learnéd and wise beyond her years; by early perils tried.
Old superstition shrank confounded from the view
And Reformation, warier grown, commenced its work anew.
Yet joyless is the feast that love has never crown'd,
And heaven rejects the sacrifice where not the heart is found.
Another age, and yet another, must succeed,
Ere charity be understood, or wiser England freed
From persecution's stain, which dimm'd her face no less
In confiscation's garb, or mere exclusion's milder dress,
Than when her fiery robe in Smithfield she put on,
And stupid ignorance half excused the deeds in darkness done.
The more it was repress'd, the more opinion grew;
Geneva sounded through the land, and Knox the trumpet blew.
That fierce and stirring blast uprooted Scotland's throne;
The sister queen—the beauty—pleads in misery's humbled tone.
O blot of Tudor's line! O England's lasting shame!
Again the ruthless steel descends on woman's sacred frame—
That frame, an outraged queen's—the third since Boleyn bled,
Who on the thirsty block laid down her unresisting head.
Yet not for this the mighty debt we owe to thee,
And thy great name, Elizabeth! can ever cancell'd be.
No—Britain first may sink beneath her subject main,
Ere she forget the dauntless arm that quell'd the pride of Spain,
O'er native freedom threw a broad protecting shield,
And England's rising energies to her own sons reveal'd.
Then was her golden age in arts and learned lore,
When free-born genius burst away, to heights unknown before,
And never equall'd since. Then Shakspeare's deathless lays
Were heard, and Spenser pour'd the song in Gloriana's praise.