_Mother of God! thy starry smile Still bless us from above! Keep pure our souls from passion's guile, Our hearts from earthly love! Still save each soul from guilt apart As stainless as each sword And guard undimmed in every heart The image of our Lord!_ O goodliest fellowship that the world has known, True hearts and stalwart arms! above your breasts Glitters no flash of wreathen amulet Forged against sword-stroke by the chanted rhythm Of charms accurst; but in each steadfast heart Blazes the light of cloudless purity, That like a splendid jewel glorifies With restless fire the gold that spheres it round, And marks you children of our God, whose lives He guards with the awful jealousy of love. And even me that generous love has spared,-- Me, trustless knight and miserable man,-- Sad prey of dark and mutinous thoughts that tempt My sick soul into perjury and death-- Since his great love had pity of my pain, Has spared to lead these blameless warriors safe Into the desert from the blazing towns, Out of the desert to the inviolate hills Where God has roofed them with his hollow shield. Through all these days of tempest and eclipse His hand has led me and his wrath has flashed Its lightnings in the pathway of my sword. And so I hope, and so my crescent faith Gains daily power, that all my prayers and tears And toils and blood and anguish borne for him May blot the accusing of my deadly sin From heaven's high compt, and give me rest in death; And lay the pallid ghost of mortal love, That fills with banned and mournful loveliness, Unblest, the haunted chambers of my soul. My misery will atone,--my misery, Dear God, will surely atone! for not the sting Of macerating thongs, nor the slow horror Of crowns of thorny iron maddening the brows, Nor all that else pale hermits have devised To scourge the rebel senses in their shade Of caverned desolation, have the power To smart and goad and lash and mortify Like the great love that binds my ruined heart Relentless, as the insidious ivy binds The shattered bulk of some deserted tower, Enlacing slow and riving with strong hands Of pitiless verdure every seam and jut, Till none may tear it forth and save the tower. So binds and masters me my hopeless love. So through the desert, in the silent hills, I' the current of the battle's storm and stress, One thought has driven me,--that though men may call Me stainless Paladin, Knight leal and true To Christ and Our Lady, still I know myself A knight not after God's own heart, a soul Recreant, and whelmed in the forbidden sin. For dearer to my sad heart than the cross I give my heart's best blood for are the eyes That long ago, when youth and hope were mine, I loved in thy still valleys, far Provence! And sweeter to my spirit than the bells Of rescued Salem are the loving tones Of her dear voice, soft echoing o'er the years. They haunt me in the stillness and the glare Of desert noontide when the horizon's line