The Poetical Works of Aubrey De Vere

That one high realm which, not through fraud or force
But for man's need, with glad consent of men
Rose when the Roman empire lay a corse,
And the Northern Beast forth bounding from his den
Ravined alike on priest and citizen
Hath oftenest fallen. Bandits without remorse
Plotters low-voiced, and Peoples blasphemy-hoarse,
Have wrought its fall again and yet again:
Yet evermore that Hand beyond the skies
Which raised it first, restores that Sign august:
The nations wake; they stare with wondering eyes;
'Tis there, that Power! It lives because it must!
The shade it is of Peter's Rock: far hurled
It heaves along the great waves of the world.

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XXIX. AUSTRIA AND SPAIN.

IL GRAN RIFIUTO.

Austria and Spain, high daughters of a Past
So rich in rites of sage civility,
To Kings so loyal, yet in heart so free,
So true to ancient Faith when Error's blast
O'er the blind North in passionate tempest passed,
So filial to the Apostolic See,
So firm when Unbelief and Anarchy
Down the prone gulfs dragged France so far and fast,
And Nations silent stood:—What Sin, what Fate
What poison froze your blood to stagnant gall
When burst false Piedmont through that Roman gate?
Lament, brave Cid, if souls can weep in heaven!
Crowned Pole, lament! By that strong hand was driven
The earth-conquering Moslem from Vienna's wall!

When John Sobieski, King of Poland, after destroying the Turkish Army encamped around Vienna, made his entrance into the city, the People received him with the shout, ‘There was a man sent from God whose name was John.’

XXX. THE NATIONS OF CHRISTENDOM.

The Mother of the churches was perforce
The Mother of the Nations; for in each

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That moral mind, pure will, true heart and speech
Which urge great Nations starlike on their course
Found in Religion, there alone, its source:
'Twas hers the majesty of Law to teach;
To exalt high ends, illicit means impeach;
'Twixt loyal and obsequious make divorce.
A clan can boast its past and wreak its rage;
A firm can waft its bales o'er lands and seas;
A school can paint its picture, write its page:
What is it makes a Nation more than these?
That ‘Law of Nations’ which to lawless might
Limits assigns; gives sovereignty to Right.

XXXI. THE LAW OF NATIONS.

The Law of Nations died the death that hour
When Rome, the moulder of the Nations, fell:
O'er earth and heard by all rang out the knell
When first above the Capitolian tower
Far streamed the standard of the Lawless Power:
Nor less o'er palace, camp, and citadel
That hour a whisper crept—inaudible
To lands of honour reft, old Europe's dower;
‘Let us depart.’ Their patron Saints august
Left they that hour the Nations? We, since then,
Have seen strange omens and shall see again;
Treaties are null! no realm the rest can trust!
A shameful day draws to a stormy close:
But whence or when the vengeance no man knows.

429

XXXII. ST. GREGORY THE GREAT AND CHARLEMAGNE.

1.

Gregory! To thee her Faith our England owes;
But ere to England thine Augustine sailed
Rome had in thee her secular ruler hailed:
Freely her bishop for her prince she chose.
Two ages passed, then Charlemagne arose:
Crowned by Pope Leo 'mid his barons mailed
He swore to shield thenceforth God's Church assailed
By force or fraud. Unlike these days to those!
The family of Kings have wrought a wrong
First on their kingdoms' honour, next their own:
What wrong? The Sire of Kings lay late o'erthrown
By hand usurping and the lying tongue;
Kings sat and kept the clothes of that wild throng:
On Kings the loss shall fall—but not on Kings alone.

XXXIII. ST. GREGORY THE GREAT AND ENGLAND.

2.

As when, descending from that God-led bark
At last on Ararat's broad summit stayed
A ruined earth's sad heir yet undismayed
Forth paced with all his sons the Patriarch;

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As when above that world of waters stark
He stood while down they rushed and standing prayed;
As when he followed, through some wave-worn glade
With over-arching horns of granite dark
That Hand which pointed still he knew not where:—
Thus with his monks went forth from yonder pile
Augustine missioned to that northern isle;
Yon Cœlian Hill descended thus footbare;
Thus found that wilderness he sought; thus trod
A stony land of death and gave that land to God.

XXXIV. THE NOBLE REVENGE.

The nations stood around thee, frowning some
Some coldly pitying when thy head lay low:
On them what good for ill wilt thou bestow
When Wrong that overcame is overcome?
When earth in Faith's eclipse lies cold and numb;
When pride hath reaped the fruits she holp to sow;
When anarch peoples hurled from wealth to woe
In vain deplore their vanished Christendom;
When from the nether night, his penal prison
By spurious science loosed the Apostate Angel
Lifts his red bond and claims the astonished lands
Shine thou that hour, a sun from night new-risen,
Chase thou with thine his foul, disproved evangel:
Raise thou thy Cross, and bind the Murderer's hands!

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XXXV.

Yet, yet, ye Kings, and rulers of the earth
Lift up your eyes unto the hills eterne
Whence your salvation comes! From earth's dark urn
The great floods burst! O'er each ancestral hearth
Look forth, ye bold and virtuous Poor, look forth;
The meteor signs of woes to come discern;
And whence the danger be not slow to learn;
Then greet it with loud scorn and warlike mirth.
The banner of the Church is ever flying!
Less than a storm avails not to unfold
The Cross emblazoned there in massive gold:
Away with doubts and sadness tears and sighing!
It is by faith, by patience, and by dying
That we must conquer as our sires of old.

XXXVI. WALTER SCOTT AT THE TOMB OF THE STUARTS IN SAINT PETER'S.

1.

The wild deer, when the shaft is in his side
Seeks his first lair beneath the forest hoar:
Drawn back from reboant deeps the exhausted tide
Breathes his last sob on the forsaken shore:
When on the village green the sports have died
The child stands knocking at his grandsire's door:
So stands by this far tomb of Scotland's pride
Her greatest son, death-doomed, and travel-sore.

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So stand, last Singer of the Heroic Age!
Dead are those years so loyal, brave, and high
That whilome blazoned History's Missal page,
Ring yet through thy glad Minstrel-Breviary:
Old Pilgrim, ended is thy pilgrimage
This hour. The shadows round thee close: now die!

XXXVII. WALTER SCOTT AT THE TOMB OF THE STUARTS IN SAINT PETER'S.

2.

Staff-propt he stands and all his country's past
Streams back before his sadly-kindling eye;
King after King, as cloud on cloud when fast
The storm-rack rushes through the autumnal sky:
Aughrim to Flodden answers! on the blast
Now Mary's, now the Bruce's standards fly:
Those earliest, Irish, kings he sees at last
Cross-crowned on old Iona's shores who lie.
Thus as he gazed, a Voice from vault and shrine
Whispered around him—and from Peter's Tomb—
‘Not one alone but every Royal Line
To my strong gates, as thou to these, shall come
Heart-pierced at last: for mine they were; and mine
The cradles and the graves of Christendom.’

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XXXVIII. THE ‘ARA CŒLI’ ON THE CAPITOL.

Here, where of old the Roman Senate sate,
Where, thundering from his Capitolian throne
Co-regent of the Universal State
Jove o'er that Roman sceptre laid his own,
For centuries the Franciscans, humbly elate
Kept their aerial haunt and vigil lone
Here, like that lark which ‘sings at heaven's gate’
Sang, first, Rome's Christmas carols;—they are gone!
Far down beneath, the Benedictines lay
Of Orders first; far down whose science soared
Highest; far down Ignatius' Templars, they
Who raised o'er earth the Crosier and the Sword:
Here reigned the triumph of Humility:
Thy pagan triumph, Pride, is here restored.

The Dominican Order.

The Company of Jesus.

XXXIX. THE RESTORATION.

A Sorrow that for shame had hid her face
Soared to Heaven's gate and knelt in penance there
Beneath the dusk cloud of her own wet hair
Weeping, as who would fain some deed erase
That blots in dread eclipse baptismal grace:
Like a felled tree with all its branches fair

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She lay—her forehead on the ivory stair—
Low murmuring, ‘Just art Thou, but I am base:’
Then saw I in my spirit's unsealed ken
How Heaven's bright hosts thrilled like the dews of morn
When May-winds on the sacred, snowy thorn
Change diamonds into rubies: Magdalen
Arose, and kissed the Saviour's feet once more
And to that suffering soul His peace and pardon bore.

XL.

Nations self-cheated, this shall come to pass—
From yonder altar to their kingdoms down
True Kings once more shall pace, sceptre and crown
On that dim sea of marble and of brass
Showering, as angels on the sea of glass
Their amaranth crowns. All Powers once more shall own
Man's debt perpetual to Saint Peter's throne,
All lands there find their Freedom's shield. Alas!
What now are Kings? A thousand years each nation
Claimed to stand subject to a Father's eye:
All realms invoked the Apostle's arbitration
An unseen world their strength and unity:
Proud kings, proud realms, your victory is your loss!
That rule is brief which rests not on the Cross.

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XLI. SAINT PETER.

Rock of the Rock! As He, the Light of Light,
Shows forth His Father's glory evermore,
So show'st thou forth the Son's unshaken might
Throned in thy unity on every shore:
On thee His Church He built; and though all night
Tempests of leaguering demons round it roar
The Gates of Hell prevail not, and the Right
Beams lordliest through the breaking clouds of war.
Strength of that Church! the Nations round thee reel;
Like hunted creatures Kingdoms flee and pant;
But God upon His Church hath set His seal,
Fusing His own eternal adamant
Through all its bastions and its towers in thee:
Luminous it stands through thy solidity.

XLII. SAINT PETER.

First of the Faith he made confession sole
Taught by the Father, not by flesh and blood:
Then He the parts Who strengthens by the Whole
Bade him make strong his brethren, and the rod
Gave him of kingship. By that Syrian flood
Lastly, a Love thrice-challenged he confessed
That singly passed the love of all the rest
And straightway to his hand Incarnate God

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Lifting that Hand which made the worlds, accorded
Rule of His flock world-wide both fair and pure:
The mystery of His might in One he hoarded
That all, made one, might live in one secure:
In Christ the race redeemed is One;—in thee
Forth stands, a Sacrament, that Unity.

University of Virginia Library

III. PART III.

XXVIII. THE TEMPORAL POWER.