"What beast in wilderness or cultured field "The lively beauty of the leopard shows? "What flower in meadow-ground or garden grows "That to the towering lily doth not yield?...
"Woe to you, Prelates! rioting in ease "And cumbrous wealth the shame of your estate; "You, on whose progress dazzling trains await "Of pompous horses; whom vain titles please;...
Once more the Church is seized with sudden fear, And at her call is Wicliffe disinhumed: Yea, his dry bones to ashes are consumed And flung into the brook that travels near;...
Thus is the storm abated by the craft Of a shrewd Counselor, eager to protect The Church, whose power hath recently been checked, Whose monstrous riches threatened. So the shaft...
Where long and deeply hath been fixed the root In the blest soil of gospel truth, the Tree, (Blighted or scathed tho' many branches be, Put forth to wither, many a hopeful shoot)...
Threats come which no submission may assuage, No sacrifice avert, no power dispute; The tapers shall be quenched, the belfries mute, And, 'mid their choirs unroofed by selfish rage,...
Yet many a Novice of the cloistral shade, And many chained by vows, with eager glee The warrant hail, exulting to be free; Like ships before whose keels, full long embayed...
The lovely Nun (submissive, but more meek Through saintly habit than from effort due To unrelenting mandates that pursue With equal wrath the steps of strong and weak) Goes forth unveiling timidly a cheek...
Ye, too, must fly before a chasing hand, Angels and Saints, in every hamlet mourned! Ah! if the old idolatry be spurned, Let not your radiant Shapes desert the Land: Her adoration was not your demand,...
But, to outweigh all harm, the sacred Book, In dusty sequestration wrapt too long, Assumes the accents of our native tongue; And he who guides the plough, or wields the crook,...
Yet more, round many a Convent's blazing fire Unhallowed threads of revelry are spun; There Venus sits disguised like a Nun, While Bacchus, clothed in semblance of a Friar,...
Not utterly unworthy to endure Was the supremacy of crafty Rome; Age after age to the arch of Christendom Aerial keystone haughtily secure; Supremacy from Heaven transmitted pure,...
Deep is the lamentation! Not alone From Sages justly honoured by mankind; But from the ghostly tenants of the wind, Demons and Spirits, many a dolorous groan Issues for that dominion overthrown:...
Grant, that by this unsparing hurricane Green leaves with yellow mixed are torn away, And goodly fruitage with the mother spray; 'Twere madness, wished we, therefore, to detain,...
Mother! whose virgin bosom was uncrost With the least shade of thought to sin allied; Woman! above all women glorified, Our tainted nature's solitary boast; Purer than foam on central ocean tost;...
"Sweet is the holiness of Youth" so felt Time-honoured Chaucer speaking through that Lay By which the Prioress beguiled the way, And many a Pilgrim's rugged heart did melt....
The tears of man in various measure gush From various sources; gently overflow From blissful transport some, from clefts of woe Some with ungovernable impulse rush; And some, coeval with the earliest blush...
The saintly Youth has ceased to rule, discrowned By unrelenting Death. O People keen For change, to whom the new looks always green! Rejoicing did they cast upon the ground...
How fast the Marian death-list is unrolled! See Latimer and Ridley in the might Of Faith stand coupled for a common flight! One (like those prophets whom God sent of old)...
Methinks that I could trip o'er heaviest soil, Light as a buoyant bark from wave to wave, Were mine the trusty staff that Jewel gave To youthful Hooker, in familiar style...