Ah, happy Fool of Christ, unawed By familiar sanctities, You served your Lord at holy ease! Dear Jester in the Courts of God---- In whose spirit, enchanting yet, Wisdom and love together met, Laughed on each other for content! That an inward merriment, An inviolate soul of pleasure, To your motions taught a measure All your days; which tyrant king, Nor bonds, nor any bitter thing, Could embitter or perturb; No daughter’s tears, nor, more acerb, A daughter’s frail declension from Thy serene example, come Between thee and thy much content. Nor could the last sharp argument Turn thee from thy sweetest folly; To the keen _accolade_ and holy Thou didst bend low a sprightly knee, And jest Death out of gravity As a too sad-visaged friend; So, jocund passing to the end Of thy laughing martyrdom; And now from travel art gone home Where, since gain of thee was given, Surely there is more mirth in heaven! Thus, in Fisher and in thee, Arose the purple dynasty, The anointed Kings of Tyburn tree; High in act and word each one: He that spake--and to the sun Pointed--“I shall shortly be Above yon fellow,” He too, he No less high of speech and brave, Whose word was: “Though I shall have Sharp dinner, yet I trust in Christ To have a most sweet supper.” Priced Much by men that utterance was Of the doomed Leonidas,-- Not more exalt than these, which note Men who thought as Shakespeare wrote. But more lofty eloquence Than is writ by poet’s pens Lives in your great deaths: O these Have more fire than poesies! And more ardent than all ode, The pomps and raptures of your blood! By that blood ye hold in fee This earth of England; Kings are ye: And ye have armies--Want, and Cold, And heavy Judgments manifold Hung in the unhappy air, and Sins That the sick gorge to heave begins, Agonies and Martyrdoms, Love, Hope, Desire, and all that comes From the unwatered soul of man Gaping on God. These are the van Of conquest, these obey you; these, And all the strengths of weaknesses, That brazen walls disbed. Your hand, Princes, put forth to the command, And levy upon the guilty land Your saving wars; on it go down, Black beneath God’s and heaven’s frown; Your prevalent approaches make With unsustainable grace, and take Captive the land that captived you; To Christ enslave ye and subdue Her so bragged freedom: for the crime She wrought on you in antique time, Parcel the land among you; reign, Viceroys to your sweet Suzerain! Till she shall know This lesson in her overthrow: Hardest servitude has he That’s jailed in arrogant liberty; And freedom, spacious and unflawed, Who is walled about with God. THE HOUND OF HEAVEN BY FRANCIS THOMPSON