DISSOLUTION OF THE MONASTERIES. To unrelenting mandates that pursue With equal wrath the steps of strong and weak) Suffused with blushes of celestial hue, While through the Convent's 2 gate to open view Poured forth, while summer suns at distance shine, XXIII. CONTINUED. YET many a Novice of the cloistral shade, Like ships before whose keels, full long embayed Their liquid world, for bold discovery, In all her quarters temptingly displayed! Yet some, Noviciates of the cloistral shade, 1822. 1822. 51 Hope guides the young; but when the old must pass Alms may be needed) which that House bestowed ? To keep this new and questionable road? XXIV. SAINTS. YE, too, must fly before a chasing hand, Let not your radiant Shapes desert the Land: The fond heart proffered it—the servile heart; Michael, and thou, St George, whose flaming brand * And rapt Cecilia, seraph-haunted Queen ‡ Who in the penitential desert met Gales sweet as those that over Eden blew ! * St George, patron Saint of England, supposed to have suffered A.D. 284. The Greek Church honours him as "the great martyr."-ED. + St Margaret, supposed to have suffered martyrdom at Antioch, A.D. 275. -ED. St Cecilia, patron Saint of Music, has been enrolled as a martyr by the Latin Church from the 5th century. -ED. THE VIRGIN. 53 XXV. THE VIRGIN.* MOTHER! whose virgin bosom was uncrost Our tainted nature's solitary boast; Purer than foam on central ocean tost; Brighter than eastern skies at daybreak strewn Yet some, I ween, Of mother's love with maiden purity, Of high with low, celestial with terrene! Compare the following Sonnet by John Nichol, Professor of English Literature in the University of Glasgow. AVE MARIA. Ave Maria! on a thousand thrones Raised by the weary hearts that beat to thee, Mother of Christ! whom ages old adorn, And hundred climes, by gentle thought and deed, Who fence their folds from Love's serener law, grate on scrannel pipes of wretched straw." -ED. 54 IMAGINATIVE REGRETS. XXVI. APOLOGY. Nor utterly unworthy to endure Supremacy from Heaven transmitted pure, XXVII. IMAGINATIVE REGRETS. DEEP is the lamentation! Not alone. "To the second part of the same series" (the Ecclesiastical Sonnets) "I have added two, in order to do more justice to the Papal Church for the services which she did actually render to Christianity and Humanity in the Middle Ages."-W. W. (in a letter to Professor Reed, Sept. 4, 1842).—ED. +John Fisher, born in 1487, became Bishop of Rochester in 1504, was one of the first in England to write against Luther, opposed the divorce of Henry VIII., was sent to the Tower in 1534, and his see declared void, was made a Cardinal by the Pope while in prison, and beheaded on Tower Hill, 1535.-ED. Sir Thomas More, the author of Utopia, born in 1480, was Speaker of the House of Commons in 1523, and succeeded Wolsey as Lord Chancellor in 1530. Disapproving of the king's divorce, he resigned office, was committed to the Tower for refusing to take the oath of supremacy, found guilty of treason, and beheaded in 1535.-ED. REFLECTIONS. Proud Tiber grieves, and far-off Ganges, blind XXVIII. REFLECTIONS. GRANT that by this unsparing hurricane And airy bonds are hardest to disown; Hence, with the spiritual sovereignty transferred Of reckless mastery, hitherto unknown. 55 Compare the echo of the Lady's voice in the lines To Joanna, in the "Poems on the naming of places" (Vol. II. p. 158).—ED. The desert around Mecca.-ED. Mahomet affirmed that he had constant visits from angels; and that the angel Gabriel dictated to him the Koran. —ED. The mirage.-ED. || Pillars of sand raised by whirlwinds in the desert, which correspond to waterspouts at sea.-ED. Hades.-Ed. |