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...
For what contend the wise? for nothing less Than that the Soul, freed from the bonds of Sense, And to her God restored by evidence Of things not seen, drawn forth from their recess,...
Outstretching flameward his upbraided hand (O God of mercy, may no earthly Seat Of judgment such presumptuous doom repeat!) Amid the shuddering throng doth Cranmer stand;...
Aid, glorious Martyrs, from your fields of light, Our mortal ken! Inspire a perfect trust (While we look round) that Heaven's decrees are just: Which few can hold committed to a fight...
Scattering, like birds escaped the fowler's net, Some seek with timely flight a foreign strand; Most happy, re-assembled in a land By dauntless Luther freed, could they forget...
Hail, Virgin Queen! o'er many an envious bar Triumphant, snatched from many a treacherous wile! All hail, sage Lady, whom a grateful Isle Hath blest, respiring from that dismal war...
A bright-haired company of youthful slaves, Beautiful strangers, stand within the pale Of a sad market, ranged for public sale, Where Tiber's stream the immortal City laves:...