The Poems of Madison Cawein, Volume 1 (of 5): Lyrics and old world idyllsCawein, Madison Julius
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The Poems of Madison Cawein, Volume 1 (of 5): Lyrics and old world idylls
Cawein, Madison Julius
American poetry
When she is Queen, three steadfast purposes
Have grown their causes to divine results.--
No young imagination did I train
With such endeavor and for no reward.--
How often have I told her of the things
She could perform when Queen, while silently
And pensively she sat and, leaning, heard,
Absorbed upon my face! her missal,--crushed
By one propped elbow, its bent, careless leaves
Rich with illuminated capitals
Of gold and purple,--open on her lap.
Long, long we sat thus, brothers, speaking of
Felicity; discoursing earnestly
Of Earth and Heaven; and of who adhere
To God's true Vicar and our Holy Church:
Beatitude and all the ceaseless bliss,
Celestial, of eternal Paradise,
As everlasting as the souls that have
Built a strong tower for the only Faith.
And I recall now how, in exhortation,
Filled with the fervor of my cause I cried:--
"Walk not on ways that lead but to despair,
The easy ways of Satan! Rather thorns
For naked feet that will not falter if
Retentive of the arm of our true Church,
Who comforts weariness with promises
Still urging onward; and refreshes hearts
With whisperings in the tuneless ear of Care."--
And oft, big-eyed with innocence, she asked,
"Do some digress?"--And I, "Yea, many! yea!
And there's necessity! we should annul,
Pluck forth the canker that contaminates,
Corrodes the milk-white beauty of our Rose.--
God's persecution! they confront our Faith
With brows of stigmatizing error writ
In Hell's red handwriting. Shall such persist?
No!--Heaven demands an end to all this shame!"--
Her pledge she gave me then: "When Queen, for Spain
The Inquisition! Let the Saints record!
I promise thee, my father, thou shalt be
A mattock of deracination to
Extirpate heresy."
Well, well; time goes:
The world moves onward, and I still am--oh,
Frere Torquemada, a Dominican!...
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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