No!--I have nothing new to say,
Why must ye wait to hear my story?
Go, get thee on thy trackless way,
There’s many a weary mile before ye--
Get thee to bed, lest some poor poet,
Enraptur’d with thy phiz, should dip
A pen in ink to let thee know it,
And (mindful not to let thee slip
His fingers) bid thy moonship stay
And list, what he might have to say.
Yet I do love thee!--and if aught
The muse can serve thee, will petition
Her grace t’ attend thine airy court,
And play the part of first musician--
But “ode,” and “lines,” “address,” and “sonnet,”
“To Luna dedicate,” are now
So plentiful, that (fie upon it!)
She’ll add no glory to thy brow,
But tell thee, in such strains as follow,
That thy mild sheen beats Phosphor hollow!
That thou art “fairest of the fair,”
Tho’ Phœbus more that’s grand possesses,
That tree and tower reflect thy glare,
And the glad stream thy ray confesses,
That, when thy silvery beams illumine
The landscape, nature seems bedight
With loveliness so rare, that few men
Have e’er been blessed with such a sight!
And all such _moonshine_:--but enough
Of this tame “milk and water” stuff.
Δ
[7] Butler’s Saints.
[8] Ibid.
[9] Ibid.
~February 23.~
_St. Serenus_, A. D. 307. _St. Milburge._ B. _Dositheus_. _St. Peter
Damian_, Card. Bp. A. D. 1072. _St. Boisil_, Prior of Melross.
_St. Milburge_, 7th Cent.
She was sister to St. Mildred, wore a hair cloth, and built the
monastery of Wenlock, in Shropshire. One day being at Stokes, a
neighbouring village, brother Hierome Porter says, that “a young
gallant, sonne to a prince of that countrey, was soe taken with her
beautie, that he had a vehement desire to carrie her away by force and
marrie her.” St. Milburge fled from him and his companions till she had
passed a little brook, called Corfe, which then suddenly swelled up and
threatened her pursuers with destruction, wherefore they desisted. She
ordered the wild geese who ate the corn of her monastic fields to be
gone elsewhere, and they obeyed her as the waters did. After her death,
her remains were discovered, in 1100, by two children sinking up to
their knees in her grave, the dust whereof cured leprosies, restored the
sight, and spoiled medical practice. A diseased woman at Patton,
drinking of the water wherein St. Milburge’s bones were washed, there
came from her stomach “a filthie worme, ugly and horrible to behold,
having six feete, two hornes on his head, and two on his tayle.” Brother
Porter tells this, and that the “worme was shutt up in a hollow piece of
wood, and reserved afterwards in the monasterie, as a trophie, and
monument of S. Milburg, untill by the lascivious furie of him that
destroyed all goodnes in England, that, with other religious houses, and
monasteries, went to ruine.”[10] Hence the “filthie worme” was lost, and
we have nothing instead but the Reformation.
* * * * *