Works

"A Priest in Spite of Himself"



"How far is St. Helena from a little child at play!"
What makes you want to wander there with all the world between....

Whence did all that fury come?
From empty tomb or Virgin womb?
Saint Joseph thought the world would melt
But liked the way his finger smelt.

'Twas August - Hastings every day was filling -
Hastings, that "greenest spot on memory's waste"!
With crowds of idlers willing and unwilling
To be bedipped - be noticed - or be braced,...

("Oh, regardez le ciel!")

[June, 1828.]


See, where on high the moving masses, piled
By the wind, break in groups grotesque and wild,
Present strange shapes to view;...

1

Soul of my body! what a death
For such a day of envious gloom,
Unbroken passion of the sky!
As if the pure, kind-hearted breath
Of some soft power, ever nigh,...

Do you want to hear a story
With a nobler praise than "glory,"
Of a man who loved the right like heaven and loathed the wrong like hell?
Then, that story let me tell you
Once again, though it as well you...

"Sic visum Veneri: cui placet impares
Formas atque animos sub juga a'nea
Saevo mittere cum joco."
--Hor. i. 33.


"Love mocks us all"--as Horace said of old:...

BOOK I.

Niloiya said to Noah, "What aileth thee,
My master, unto whom is my desire,
The father of my sons?" He answered her,
"Mother of many children, I have heard...

In the small Village of St Joseph, below the City of Ottawa, still lives or did live very recently, an ancient couple, whole story is told in the following lines.


PART I
...

High-perch'd upon the rocky way,
Stands a Posada stern and grey;
Which from the valley, seems as if,
A condor there had paus'd to 'light
And rest upon that lonely cliff,
From some stupendous flight;...

The treacherous sands had caught our boat,
And held it with a strong embrace
And death at our imprisoned crew
Was sternly looking face to face.

With anxious hearts, but failing strength,...

INTRODUCTION.

I sought the long clear twilights of the North,
When, from its nest of trees, my father's house
Sees the Aurora deepen into dawn
Far northward in the East, o'er the hill-top;...

In through the open window
To the chamber where I lay,
There came the beat of merry feet,
From the dancers over the way.
And back on the wings of the music
That rose on the midnight air,...

A wondrous city, that had temples there
More rich than that one built by David's son,
Which called forth Ophir's gold, when Israel
Made Lebanon half naked for her sake....

Aw know some fowk will call it crime,
To put sich stooaries into ryhme,
But yet, contentedly aw chime
Mi simple ditty:
An if it's all a waste o' time,
The moor's the pity.

- - - -
...

He thought he saw an Elephant
That practiced on a fife:
He looked again, and found it was
A letter from his wife.
'At length I realize,' he said,
'The bitterness of life!'
...

Here, where the thoroughfares meet at an angle
Of ninety degrees (this angle is right),
You may hear the loafers that jest and wrangle
Through the sun-lit day and the lamp-lit night;...

Sir, we approve your curling lip and nose
At this vile sight.
These men, these women are brute beasts? - Who knows,
Sir, but that you are right?

Panders and harlots, rogues and thieves and worse,...

The drowsy day, with half-closed eyes,
Dreams in this quaint forgotten street,
That, like some old-world wreckage, lies,
Left by the sea's receding beat,
Far from the city's restless feet.
...

For them that hope in Thee.... Thou shalt hide them in the secret of Thy face, from the disturbance of men.

Thou shalt protect them in Thy tabernacle from the contradiction of tongues.
...