By day and night her sorrows fall Where miscreant hands and rude Have stained her pure ethereal pall With many a martyr’s blood. And yearns not her parental heart, To hear _their_ secret sighs, Upon whose doubting way apart Bewildering shadows rise? Who to her side in peace would cling, But fear to wake, and find What they had deemed her genial wing Was Error’s soothing blind. She treasures up each throbbing prayer: Come, trembler, come and pour Into her bosom all thy care, For she has balm in store. Her gentle teaching sweetly blends With this clear light of Truth The aërial gleam that Fancy lends To solemn thoughts in youth.— If thou hast loved, in hours of gloom, To dream the dead are near, And people all the lonely room With guardian spirits dear, Dream on the soothing dream at will: The lurid mist is o’er, That showed the righteous suffering still Upon th’ eternal shore. If with thy heart the strains accord, That on His altar-throne Highest exalt thy glorious Lord, Yet leave Him most thine own; Oh, come to our Communion Feast: There present, in the heart As in the hands, th’ eternal Priest Will His true self impart.— Thus, should thy soul misgiving turn Back to the enchanted air, Solace and warning thou mayst learn From all that tempts thee there. And, oh! by all the pangs and fears Fraternal spirits know, When for an elder’s shame the tears Of wakeful anguish flow, Speak gently of our sister’s fall: Who knows but gentle love May win her at our patient call The surer way to prove? King Charles the Martyr. This is thankworthy, if a man for conscience toward God endure grief, suffering wrongfully. 1 _St. Peter_ ii. 19. PRAISE to our pardoning God! though silent now The thunders of the deep prophetic sky, Though in our sight no powers of darkness bow Before th’ Apostles’ glorious company; The Martyrs’ noble army still is ours, Far in the North our fallen days have seen How in her woe this tenderest spirit towers For Jesus’ sake in agony serene. Praise to our God! not cottage hearths alone, And shades impervious to the proud world’s glare, Such witness yield; a monarch from his throne Springs to his Cross and finds his glory there. Yes: whereso’er one trace of thee is found, As in the Sacred Land, the shadows fall: With beating hearts we roam the haunted ground, Lone battle-field, or crumbling prison hall. And there are aching solitary breasts, Whose widowed walk with thought of thee is cheered Our own, our royal Saint: thy memory rests On many a prayer, the more for thee endeared.