OTHER INFLUENCES 19 XIX PRIMITIVE SAXON CLERGY * How beautiful your presence, how benign, A benediction from his voice or hand; 5 ΙΟ Whence grace, through which the heart can understand, And vows, that bind the will, in silence made. XX OTHER INFLUENCES Aн, when the Body,1 round which in love we clung, Is chilled by death, does mutual service fail ? Is tender pity then of no avail ? Are intercessions of the fervent tongue 1 1837. Frame, 1822. * Having spoken of the zeal, disinterestedness, and temperance of the clergy of those times, Bede thus proceeds :-"Unde et in magna erat veneratione tempore illo religionis habitus, ita ut ubicunque clericus aliquis aut monachus adveniret, gaudenter ab omnibus tanquam Dei famulus exciperetur. Etiam si in itinere pergens inveniretur, accurrebant, et flexa cervice, vel manu signari, vel ore illius se benedici, gaudebant. Verbis quoque horum exhortatoriis diligenter auditum praebebant." (Lib. iii. cap. 26.) W. W. 1822. A waste of hope ?-From this sad source have sprung 6 Hence, prayers are shaped amiss, and dirges sung For Souls whose doom is fixed! The way is smooth For Power that travels with the human heart: Confession ministers the pang to soothe In him who at the ghost of guilt doth start. IO XXI SECLUSION LANCE, shield, and sword relinquished—at his side Or staff more harmless than a shepherd's crook, In cloistered privacy. But not to dwell Like ivy, round some ancient elm, they twine 5 ΙΟ * This, and the two following sonnets, were published in Time's Telescope, July 2, 1823.-ED. The ancient elm," with ivy twisting round it "in grisly folds and strictures serpentine," which suggested these lines, grew in Rydal Park, near the path to the upper waterfall.-ED. REPROOF 21 XXII CONTINUED METHINKS that to some vacant hermitage Crisp, yellow leaves my bed; the hooting owl 5 XXIII REPROOF BUT what if One, through grove or flowery meed, Of a voluptuous indolence, should meet Thy hovering Shade, O 3 venerable Bede! * There are several natural "hermitages," such as this, near the Rydal beck.-ED. The saint, the scholar, from a circle freed Of toil stupendous, in a hallowed seat Of learning, where thou heard'st 1 the billows beat The recreant soul, that dares to shun the debt Of a long life; and, in the hour of death, 5 ΙΟ XXIV SAXON MONASTERIES, AND LIGHTS AND SHADES OF THE RELIGION By such examples moved to unbought pains, Where Piety, as they believe, obtains 1 1827. he heard 1822. * Bede spent the most of his life in the seclusion of the monastery of Jarrow, near the mouth of the Tyne; the wild coast referred to in the Sonnet being the coast of Northumberland.-ED. He expired in the act of concluding a translation of St. John's Gospel. -W. W. 1822. He expired dictating the last words of a translation of St. John's Gospel. -W. W. 1827. See, in Turner's History, vol. iii. p. 528, the account of the erection of Ramsey Monastery. Penances were removable by the performance of acts of charity and benevolence.-W. W. 1822. "Wherever monasteries were founded, marshes were drained, or woods cleared, and wastes brought into cultivation; the means of subsistence were increased by improved agriculture, and by improved horticulture new comforts were added to life. The humblest as well as the highest pursuits were followed in these great and most beneficial establishments. While part of the members were studying the most inscrutable points of theology, others were employed in teaching babes and children the rudiments of useful knowledge; others as copyists, limners, carvers, workers in wood, and in stone, and in metal, and in trades and manufactures of every kind which the community required." (Southey's Book of the Church, vol. i. chap. iv. pp. 61, 62.)-ED. MISSIONS AND TRAVELS 23 5 From Heaven a general blessing; timely rains Flow to the poor, and freedom to the slave; And if full oft the Sanctuary save Lives black with guilt, ferocity it calms. XXV MISSIONS AND TRAVELS NOT sedentary all: there are who roam That, like the Red-cross Knight, they urge their way, Truth, their immortal Una? Babylon, Nor leaves her Speech one word to aid the sigh2 1 1832. And peace, and equity.-Bold faith! yet rise 1822. 1827. speech wherewith to clothe a sigh 1822. |