Relics and Memorials. THE twelve holy men are gathered in prayer, The psalm mounts on high, the Spirit descends; A keen silent thrilling is round them in air, A power from The Highest in thought and word blends. They pass by the way, to sight poor and mean; How glorious the train that streams to and fro' The blind, dumb, halt, withered by hundreds are seen ; The prisoners of Satan lie chained where they go. O lay them but where the shadow may fall Of Christ's awful saint, to prayer as he speeds; The mighty love-token all fiends shall appal; A gale breathe from Eden assuaging all needs. Or bring where they lie, Paul's girdle or vest: One touch and one word; the pain fleets away, The dark hour of frenzy is charmed into rest :— The hem of Christ's garment all creatures obey. 474 RELICS AND MEMORIALS. Christ is in his saints: from Godhead made man, The virtue goes out, the whole world to bless; O'er lands parched and weary that shadow began To spread from Saint Peter, and ne'er shall grow less. Judas. FOR him a waking blood-hound, yelling loud, Till the betrayer's self it had betrayed. Oft changed the place; in hope away to wind; With that, a flaming brand a Fury catched And shook and tossed it round in his wild thought; So from his heart all joy, all comfort snatched With every star of hope; and as he sought (With present fear, and future grief distraught) To fly from his own heart, and aid implore Of Him, the more he gives, that hath the more, Whose storehouse is the heavens, too little for his store: And when wild Pentheus, grown mad with fear, Two bloody suns stalking the dusky sphere, With eyes flung back upon his mother's ghost, That with infernal serpents all emboss'd And torches quenched in blood, doth her stern son accost. Such horrid gorgons, and misformed forms Of damned fiends, flew dancing in his heart, That now unable to endure their storms, "Fly, fly, (he cries,) thyself whate'er thou art, Hell, hell, already burns in every part." So down into his torturer's arms he fell Yet oft he snatched and started as he hung:- The headlong body ready to be flung By the deluding fancy from some high And clasps the yielding pillow, half asleep, Giles Fletcher. The Mission of the Word. All nations shall come and worship before thee.-REV. xv. 4. AND thou, the Light of God's eternal Word, Hid and unknown from half the world, at length, The ray pervades pale Greenland's wintry shore— William Lisle Bowles. |