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Silent at first, with secret awe impress'd,
Unwonted tumults heaving in his breast,
The Priest his way pursued; and time had gone
Ere to a calmer mind subsiding down:
“Tell me,” he cries, “O comrade heavenly fair,
Tell me (if it be lawful to declare)
Whether yon group so glitteringly bright,
That glides along inorb'd in liquid light,
Rightly mine inly-musing heart has guess'd
To be the same Three Children ever-blest,
Who in their Faith's high-soul'd integrity
Spurning the Babylonian king's decree,
Refused the golden image to adore
Set up in Dura's plain in days of yore?
Wherefore to them the sevenfold-heated flame
Like a soft cooling dewy breeze became,
And they within its fiery concave stood,
As though the covert of an arching wood
Did o'er their heads its budding branches fling
Breathing sweet fragrance of immortal Spring:
Wherein the while, unconscious of the blaze,
They hymn'd their royal Canticle of praise,
Amidst them, lo! an unexpected guest
Stood forth the Son of God to sight confess'd,
As on the Mount with His Apostles three,
And they transfigured shone as now I see,
In beatific brightness all divine,
As Saints imparadised in glory shine.
Say, am I right? or is the bright display
Rather some airy masquerade of May,
Such as the vacant mind might weave at will,
Lull'd in the sunbeams of the morning still?”

To whom the other: “Well thy heart has guess'd;
Yon three are they, the Martyrs ever-blest,
Who rather than bend down adoring knee
In homage of a vain idolatry,
Contemning death, the fiery furnace chose
For their destruction heap'd by Israel's foes;
But One, amidst them there, from Heav'n appear'd;
Him the Chaldean Tyrant saw and fear'd;
Him the flame worshipp'd at its raving height,
Licking with trembling tongue his hand of might:
They all the while, within their shrine of fire,
As choristers within some golden choir,
Singing aloud in their sweet Maker's praise,
Unscathed, untainted, by the sevenfold blaze!
Therefore, when dying in an after-day
The Holy Children went in peace their way,
To them in memory of that Hymn was given
To lead the happy minstrelsy of Heaven;
Where evermore in glowing strains they sing
The glory manifold of glory's King,
Save when descending by the crystal stair
Which Angels secretly have shown them there,
At times to earth they come, and wind along
O'er dell and dale, with music and with song,
(Mostly when Spring has trick'd the groves anew,
And Nature wears her purest, loveliest hue),
A glistening Pageantry in green and gold,
Singing the selfsame Hymn they sang of old,
To that high Majesty whose hidden power
Sustains the force of Nature hour by hour,
And through the seasons, as they come and go,
Evolves the changes in perpetual flow.
Such the mysterious tones at morning clear
Borne from the coppice on the woodman's ear
And such the fleeting forms that interweave
Their golden glimpses with the mists of eve.
But if you ask me, whither this new dawn
So fast we speed along the dewy lawn,
Know that to Tintern's Sanctuary fair
We, early thus, on pilgrimage repair;
For thither, on this St. Augustin's Day,
Comes the great Lady of the Month of May,
With all her Court; and in her ancient pile
Hold festival the Saints of Britain's Isle,
In her Immaculate Conception's praise,
The late-defined Belief of earlier days.”

“Dear youth, thy news, exceeding all I sought,
Has fill'd me with amaze too deep for thought,”
The Priest replies; “and hardly may I dare
Petition thee more fully to declare
Matters in such high mystery enshrined,
Unsuitable to this poor mortal mind.”

He in return, a smile of winning grace
Borne from the heart and beaming on his face;
“To him whose ministry so high ascends
That at his feet all human grandeur bends,
Priest, Judge, and Deputy, of God most High,
What favour can our littleness deny?
Know, therefore, since that day of evil doom
Which blotted out this realm from Christendom,
And cast the Faith of centuries away,
To unbelief and heresy a prey;
Mary, still mindful of the seagirt Isle
That once so loved to bask beneath her smile,
And worshipp'd her as its especial Queen,
Like some fair lady in her own demesne,
Incessantly for England pour'd her sighs
From her empyreal faldstool in the skies,
To that dear Son of hers who reigns above,
Lord of illimitable grace and love,
And from th' eternal centre sweetly bends
The circling times to their appointed ends.
Nor pleaded She in vain, whose heart accords
In each desire so wholly with her Lord's;
Whose lips perennial benedictions shower,
Omnipotent in prayer as He in power.

“Long were the History, nor needs to tell
What thou already knowest but too well;
How persecution all its vials pour'd
Upon the sacred remnant of the Lord
In this poor Isle,—yet still to Peter true,
In number as in strength the Faithful grew
Beneath Egyptian bondage; till at last,
Despite of Satan's pestilential blast,
Despite of bigotry's unhallow'd rage,
And all the frenzy of a godless age,
Once more establish'd by the Holy See
In sacred Hierarchic majesty
(Through him whose heart in Mary's is enshrined,
Immortal Pius, glory of mankind),
The Church of ancient days again uprose
In order bright confronting all its foes,
With serried ranks and every flag unfurl'd,
Boldly confess'd before a trembling world.

“Now therefore, when, for grievous trials past,
A second day of promise dawns at last,
And o'er the Isle of our dear Lady's love
In gifts of grace descends the heavenly Dove,
Encouraging so many, far and wide,
To glory in the Faith they once denied;
Fresh from the triumphs offer'd to her Name
By all the Christian realms with one acclaim
Upon occasion of th' august Decree
Of her Conception's peerless purity,
She makes a solemn progress through the land,
Duly escorted, with her virgin band,
Dispensing all around her, as she goes,
Gifts on her friends, and graces on her foes.
And meeting, oft and oft, along her way,
The sad memorials of a former day;
Morn after morn, she chooses from the rest
Some one or other which she loved the best,
Chantry or Abbey-Minster, once her own,
But now with waving eglantine o'ergrown;
And there, upon the sward of emerald green,
Holding her visitation as a Queen,
Where the High Altar stood in days gone by,
The heav'n's blue arch her only canopy,
Receives from Michael the Archangel's hand,
Guardian of sacred fabrics through the land,
Report exact of every crumbling wall,
Of each fair pillar nodding to its fall;
Of shatter'd arch and desecrated choir,
Altars defaced, and carvings burnt with fire;
Of chalices polluted, fonts defiled;
Of Rood and holy images despoil'd;
Of sacred vestments left to moth and rust;
Of glorious relics trampled in the dust;
Of virgins driven forth without a home;
Of monks condemn'd in banishment to roam;
Of all the long-neglected faithful dead;
Of all the tears by her sweet children shed;
O'er that same ruin'd pile without relief
For three long bitter centuries of grief!
Meanwhile around in solemn state appear
The Patron Saints of all the churches near,
And on their knees along the sacred sward,
Their Lady at their head, with one accord
In reparation pray of ancient crime,
And for a blessing on the coming time.

“Southwards from Holy Isle her course has wound
From step to step o'er consecrated ground:
By Hexham's fane; by Whitby's stormy steep,
Whence Hilda watches o'er the German deep;
By York's hoar minster; by the Ouse's bed,
Where Selby's Abbey lifts its mitred head;
By Beverley and Grantham, loved of yore;
By Croyland's ivied wreck, and many more;
A devious route—and now the golden morn
Which saw Augustin into glory born,
Augustin, your Apostle ever-blest,
Beholds her, on the borders of the West
(As on to Glastonbury with array
Of saintly retinue she holds her way),
Turning aside to Tintern's hallow'd walls,
Where peals the thrush its daily madrigals,
But dedicated once to God's high fame,
Beneath the shelter of the Virgin's name.
There, as we learn, 'tis purposed on this day,
Ere closes in the mystic Month of May,
On part of Britain, as the solemn meed
Of that high eminence so late decreed,
To place upon her brow the Crown of gold
In her Conception's praise prepared of old.
And for the sacred pomp, from far and near
The Sons of new Jerusalem repair.
We too were on our way, when in the shade
Of this green labyrinth our steps we stay'd,
To find the spot where once her Chapel stood
Down in the bosky hollow of the Wood,
And leave behind in largesses of grace
A vernal benediction on the place.
There in the Springs succeeding shall appear
The first new primrose of the opening year;
There shall the wren that owns the golden crest
Weave daintily at will her pensile nest;
No toad or adder make its slimy cell;
No fever haunt, or noxious ague dwell.
Our task perform'd, to Tintern now with speed
Down the smooth sloping Severn we proceed,
Cistercian Tintern, pride of England's prime,
The journey long, but needing little time.
Thou too with us, if so thy heart impel,
Art free to go; but, oh! bethink thee well,
This warning, Euthanase, to thee I give,
Hardly canst thou behold these things and live!”

“And what to me,” replies the godly man,
“A little shortening of this earthly span,
Compar'd with sight of Her, my blissful Queen,
Whom all this month I have entreating been,
That of her loving bounty she would send
To me, in Heav'n's best time, a happy end.
Oh, then, lead on; for so but her I view,
Welcome to me whatever fate ensue.”

Thus as the two upon their way conversed,
Wholly in thoughts celestial immersed,
Meanwhile from haunt to haunt of coppice green,
O'er many a sunny glade that bask'd between,
Their course had sped; and now a twilight gray
Had o'er them closed, excluding half the day,
From the dense aromatic foliage shed
Of sombre pine-trees arching overhead,
Which on the tangled outskirts of the Wood
As sentinels in hoary grandeur stood.
Thence soon emerging on a terrace high,
They greet again the cheerful open sky,
And gazing forth upon the horizon wide,
Behold Salopia's Vale in all its pride,
A varied landscape, stretching far away,
Suffused with mist, or clear in morning's ray:
While at their feet Sabrina's waters gleam,
New swollen by romantic Morda's stream.

Thither obliquely slanting down the steep,
A path close-shaven by the nibbling sheep
Supplies them, in a straight continuous line,
A broad descent of scarce-perceived incline,
Whereby the margin gain'd, by rush and reed,
Through beds of nodding daffodil they thread,
Till, winding with the river's winding maze,
A sight of sudden beauty meets their gaze.
For close to where St. Oswy's ancient well
Up-bubbles from its arch'd and mossy cell,
Moor'd by a silver chainlet to the sward,
And as for some High Festival prepared,
In the smooth shelter of a mimic bay
A royal barge of state before them lay.
Antique in form as on the illumined page
Of some fair missal of the middle age,
Its curving prow, more graceful than the swan,
With scales of red and gold alternate shone;
Its hull with sparkling amethysts inlaid,
Figures of flying Cherubim display'd;
A woof of azure strew'd its spacious floor,
With lilies snowy-white enamell'd o'er;
While all of pearly plume its awning soft
On wands of twisted silver rose aloft,
With pennons hung, that ever as they play'd,
A lustre of prismatic rainbows made:
The whole, in its intensity of glow,
So deftly mirror'd in the flood below,
That of the duplicates 'twere hard to say
Which was the true, and which the phantasy.

As noted thus the Monk with rapid view,
The Pageant had embark'd; and ere he knew,
He found himself, some distance from the rest,
Sitting beneath the poop's o'erarching crest,
Whence droop'd majestically, fold in fold,
Mary's blue ensign with its cross of gold.
A moment more, and silently they sweep
Down the smooth current of the gliding deep.