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March 7.
MARTYRDOM OF VIVIA PERPETUA.
On this day [A.D. 203] Vivia Perpetua, a woman of good birth and fortune, about twenty-two, recently married, and with one child, was with five companions, after having been exposed to the beasts, dispatched by gladiators in the amphitheatre of Carthage.
Looketh she not on thee her loveliest?
O tender soul, new to each dear delight!
O wearer of her silken shining vest!
O mother glad, thy one babe at thy breast!
Who findeth the soft kiss of Earth more sweet?
Heaven and the Heavenly King who yearneth less to greet?
O! who more meetly may on roses lie?
O not for thee her grimness and her gloom!
Not thine, not thine, the earth-averted eye,
The aspiring smile, the heroic constancy,
The glorious agony, the heavenly calm,
The martyr's throngëd pangs, the martyr's fadeless palm!
But Thy dear love? Earth may have brought her best,
But canst Thou not outbeam her smile most bright?
O soft soul, dearly loved and richly blessed,
O mother glad, thy one babe at thy breast,
This sweetness thou didst sweetly cast away,
This bitterness didst clasp, young, fair Perpetua!
Urged its sweet suit; ah! how could she gainsay?
She saw him lowly kneel, she heard him pray
His child to live. Ah no—she may not stay:
The Heavenly Lover how could she deny?
O sweet to die for Him Who came for her to die!
He sent those lowly, tender eyes to greet
With soft foreshinings of celestial light!
Lo! up the golden ladder clomb her feet,
And her glad eyes beheld that Shepherd sweet
In the Heavenly Fields, His happy flock among,
And knew her own bright place amidst the blissful throng.
Smiling a smiling martyr-band she led;
Beamed each aspiring eye as the dread place
Before them its long line of horror spread;
And as the throng its fury murmurëd,
From her sweet lips so soon with angel lips to join.
One very pang the Heavenly Lover bore!
O hornëd beast, that flungest her on high,
Thy thrust she felt not! still that smile she wore,
So strong her soul in ecstasy to soar:
Quick, lingering steel, the yearning one set free,
Give her her own bright Home, her own dear Lord to see!
The fairest of Thy many mansions fair?
A palm-branch of more glowing green doth bear?
What stately form a robe more rich doth wear?
O loveliest wearer of the white array,
Who may outsing thy song, sweet-souled Perpetua?
According to Tillemont (Memoires pour servir à l' Histoire Ecclesiastique, tom. iii. p. 1) one copy of her acts represents Perpetua's husband as living and dissuading her from martyrdom, while the more authentic copy does not mention him at all; whence she is generally spoken of as a widow.
Every allusion here embodies no imaginative adjunct, no possible occurrence, but a veritable fact; not what might have happened to any martyr, but what was done and suffered by Perpetua herself. The importunity of her father, the vision of the golden ladder and the Good Shepherd, the smile and the song with which she entered the amphitheatre, her enjoyment of the scourge, her ecstatic unconsciousness of having been tossed by the cow, the awkwardness and timorousness of the executioner, are all related in her acts, of which the most searching criticism has recognised the authenticity.
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