Hold us your lilies for sanctuary!
Joseph, honoured from sea to sea,
Guard me mine and my own roof-tree,
“Man of the House”!
COELO ET IN TERRA
BY THOMAS WALSH
Earth is a jealous mother; from her breast
She will endure no separation long
From aught she bore;
So one by one
She claimeth evermore
The parent and the friend--
The loveliest and the best,
The meek, the faithful, and the strong,--
Till, link by golden link undone,
The very tomb that seems
To youth the dismal gulf of all that’s fair,
Becomes the chosen hearthstone of our dreams,
The wonder-house of all most rare,
Most deathless, and most dear;
Where the bereaved heart,
Life’s exile held apart,
Would turn for love-warmth and abiding cheer.
Yea,--earth can be so kind,--
Then ye that rule the wind,
Are ye of less appeal?
Ye spirits of the stars
And regions where the suns
Themselves as atoms wheel
Beneath your thundering cars?
Cerulean ones!--
Or goddesses, or saints,
Or demiurge, or Trinities,
Wherewith heaven highest faints!
Are ye less kind than these
Dim vaults of clay,
Ye boasts and fathers of the ancient day?
Thou god Avernian, Dis!--behold
What timid form and old
Adown thy purple gulf descends
Unto the arch of Death--(Grim friend of friends!
Be thou placated!) ’Tis a mother, see,
Takes her first step--a child--into eternity!
Leave her not fearful there
Who was of love entire,
So gentle and so fair!--
Thy majesty and dread withhold
For the high head and bold,--
Imperial Death, mock not thyself with ire!
Nay,--then it was not fear
That stayed her foot the while;
For now her lovely eyes,
Unclouded, brown,
Are lighted with their greeting smile--
The Hand awaited through the gloom
Is seen!--her whitened forehead lies
Upon the Shepherd’s shoulder down--
Yea,--her own Jesus comes,--to lead
Unto the meadows where is Peace indeed!
EGIDIO OF COIMBRA--1597 A.D.
BY THOMAS WALSH
The rumor came to Frei Egidio
In cloistered Santa Cruz, that out of Spain
King Philips secret courier had fared
With orders under seal suspending all
The statutes of Coimbra that controlled
The contests for the prefessorial chairs,
And ordering the Faculty to grant
Padre Francisco Suarez primacy
Among the masters theological.
And Frei Egidio, whose ancient name
Fonseca was relinquished when at court
It shone its brightest, who had ceaseless toiled
His score of years in cloister and in schools,
Unravelling knotty texts, disputing long
With monk and doctor of the Carmelites,
Dominicans and Trinitarians,
Consulting with the students, visiting,
Fawning and banqueting--himself and all
His faction in the University--
Now in the iron mandate from Madrid
Saw failure blight his hopes, and Santa Cruz
Eclipsed, through imposition unforeseen
Of Suarez de Toledo--only half
A monk!--a fledgling doctor in the Schools!--
And Frei Egidio unsleeping schemed
To check the rising of this Spanish star
Within Coimbra,--and his henchmen went
Stealthy and sure to sow malignant seed
To choke the Hapsburg’s new autocracy.
Stately was Frei Egidio, robust,
Swarthy and smooth his cheek; his raven locks
Piling about his tonsure in a crown.
Dark flashed his eye whene’er he rose to cast
His syllogistic spear across the lists,
Where many a mighty crest Minerva-crowned
Was forced to yield, or learnt the rapier thrust
Of his _distinguo_ and _non-sequiter_.
Still more he shone when in procession moved
The doctors, masters, and licentiates,
With tufted caps, and rainbow gowns, and stoles,
And ring, and book across the steeps and squares,
While gallant youths pressed round on horse or foot
Holding his robe or stirrup through the town--
The _Catedratico da Vespera_.
But now this little shrivelled man sent out
From Salamanca,--Philip’s paragon!--
To rule Coimbra in theology!--
One of Loyola’s strange and restless band
In the Collegio de Jesus,--reproach
To every gorgeous doctor in the halls.
’Twas true he hid away within his house,
Came seldom to the festival or Acts,
Nor oft asserted his high presidence
O’er Frei Egidio--in craft or scorn,
It mattered not--for Frei Egidio
Would pluck him forth; no signet of the King
Could serve him here; the doctors of the Schools
Should learn how he, Fonseca, had been wronged.
With formal placards soon they smeared the walls
Of shrine and college, telling day and hour
And place, where Doutor Frei Egidio
Da Presentacao, of the Eremites
Of Sao Agostinho, titular
_Da Vespera_, would his conclusions hold
“_De Voluntario et Involuntario_”
Against all-comers, and imprimis there,
The Doutor Padre Suarez, titular
_Da Prima_ of Coimbra, theologue
Of the _Collegia_ and _Compania
De Jesus_. From near and far they came,
And took their stated rank, and filed
Into the Hall of Acts; the Chancellor
And Rector in their robes of silk, and fur,
And velvet, and great chains and seals of state;
The Bishop, and Inquisitor, and Dean,
And Chapter, in their purple; Canonists
In green; and Jurists in their scarlet gowns;
Frei Luiz of the Chair of Holy Writ,
In black and white of the Dominicans;
Frei Manoel of the Chair of Scotus, garbed
In white and brown of Carmel; titulars
In Peter Lombard and Durandus,--sons
Of Bernard, Francis and Saint Benedict.
When each in order of his ancientry
Was seated in the tribune, and below
Ranged the licentiates, and bachelors,
And, out beyond, the thousand students,--gay
In plumes and ruffs, or rags and disrepair,--
There entered Bacharel Frei Constantino
Citing the _obligations_; whereupon
Egidio began his argument
With exposition and arrangement clear,
And summary abrupt and crushing, as
His old experience in the courts had taught,--
So free in tone and doctrine that the throng
Swayed on their benches, beating noisily
Great tomes together like the roll of drums.
Then silence for Suarez’s _quodlibet_;
As half-reluctant, without emphasis,
His cold unwavering voice proposed the plan
Of his objection,--When uproarious
Upon the instant, Frei Egidio
In tones of thunder shouted o’er the hall,--
“_Nego majorem!_”--the scholastic world’s
Unmitigated insult! How would he,
Spain’s boasted theologian, reply
To Portugal’s? The Jesuits around
Suarez’s rostrum marvelled, whispered, turned,
And hid their faces, when they saw him bowed
Silent a moment, ere descending, calm,
He led them home across the jeering town.
Then the mad acclamations; bells of shrine
And monastery on the hills; the sweep
Of robes prelatical, the cavalcade
Of gorgeous nobles into Santa Cruz;
The blare of trumpets, and the lanterns strung
Yellow beneath the moon; the beggar throngs;
The maskers down the lanes; the nightingales
And river-songs of students wafted far
Across Mondego’s Hills of Loneliness
And Meditation where Coimbra slept.
Thus triumphed Frei Egidio. But high
In the Collegio de Jesus the blow
Was red on every cheek; the Rector rose
In the community and said: “Padre
Francisco, not in fifty years have we
In our Coimbra known such sore defeat;
Tell me, I pray, had you no thought to save
Your honor and the honor of our schools--
You, boast of Rome and Salamanca’s halls.--
You, to whom all the dialectic arts
Have been as play--could you not parry, feint,
Or bait Egidio until some chance
Or newer turn might save your argument?”
Suarez bowed and answered: “Better far
That we be humbled than a great man fall
To utter shame and ruin! Had I told
Egidio there that in denying thus
My proposition he was challenging
A solemn canon, word for word, prescribed
At Constance by the Universal Church--
Fetch me the Book of Councils--he was lost.”
Scarce was the secret spoken, ere it stole
In rumor through the novice-court, and thence
Below to Santa Cruz,--stole, like a cloud,
Black, ominous, across the starlit dome
Above the black _mosteiro_, where the moon
Revelled amid the sculptured lattices,--
The marble ropes and palms memorial
Of old Da Gama and his caravels,--
Upon the rose-paths and the trickling pools
Along the Cloister do Silencio.
There paced Fonseca, solitary guest
To catch the final crumbs, the laughter, far
Adown the stream, of lutes that mourned his feast,
When lo! a billet in his path!--“_Awake_,--”
He read,--“_at Constance ’twas decreed. Thy voice
Hath mocked the very words of Holy Church._”--
No more,--yet in foreboding he made haste
To find his taper,--fumbled through the stacks
In dust and chill,--unclasped the folio
_Liber Conciliorum_,--saw his doom--
Perchance the rack and Secret Prisons--writ
Upon the parchment!--Silence, mocking lutes!
Come, rain! come, whirlwind, blot the lanterns out:
Now knew he their insidious subterfuge--
The slippery Pharisees--to undermine
Coimbra’s last bright paragon,--they claimed
Another victim!--But his rage gave way
To grief; his scorn was all to blame; no scheme
Was theirs; Suarez spoke the Council’s words
As duty bound him,--With the break of day
Came self-renouncement to Egidio;
And in amaze to greet his ashen face
The sacristan laid out for him the alb
And chasuble of Requiem; resigned,
Like some bowed reed the storm has swept by night,
He took the chalice, veiled it ’gainst his breast,
And ’mid the first faint glimmer down the nave
Crept forth unto his mystic Calvary.
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTE
This eBook makes the following corrections to the printed text:
Acknowledgment
Small, Maynard Company
Small, Maynard & Company
Acknowledgment
Houghton, Mifflin Company
Houghton Mifflin Company
Pg x
The Soul of Kernaghan
The Soul of Karnaghan
Pg xi
Garesche, S.J., Edward F.
Garesché, S.J., Edward F.
Pg xiii
MacDonough, Thomas
MacDonagh, Thomas
Pg 4
Moved “The men that live in West England” to following stanza
Pg 6
My brother, good morniing
My brother, good morning
Pg 7
Stands about my wraith
Stand about my wraith
Pg 13
with eyes like stars??
with eyes like stars?
Pg 14
Started new stanza after “this is the moment of love.”
Pg 26
The tickling clock
The ticking clock
Pg 41
vandals stormed, thy sacred tree
vandals stormed thy sacred tree
Pg 51
“... peace to men!’
“... peace to men!”
Pg 54
His glorous face
His glorious face
Pg 66
Started new stanza after “Waiteth on Sorrow still;”
Pg 118
And Joseph is my neighbor
“And Joseph is my neighbor
Pg 120
‘A prophet Thou!”
“A prophet Thou!”
Pg 120
‘Come with me,”
“Come with me,”
Pg 120
‘Yet ... and no soldier thou.”
“Yet ... and no soldier thou.”
Pg 120
‘How wouldst thou serve?”
“How wouldst thou serve?”
Pg 123
Himself He can not
“Himself He can not
Pg 135
Within it’s wonderness
Within its wonderness
Pg 143
Started new stanza after “lightning will”
Pg 152
the bitter day He died
the bitter day He died.
Pg 166
“Endless ... with how much pain!
“Endless ... with how much pain!”
Pg 167
praise thee well and wide
praise thee well and wide.
Pg 172
‘The Fathers ... live to God:”
“The Fathers ... live to God:”
Pg 181
Praising the Iord
Praising the Lord
Pg 210
every soul that heard.
every soul that heard.”
Pg 215
Be stilll,--Pride
Be still,--Pride
Pg 234 (footnote)
Newman calls the Blesed Virgin
Newman calls the Blessed Virgin
Pg 246
Started new stanza after “that was bruised!”
Pg 262
Naught shelters thee ...”
“Naught shelters thee ...”
Pg 266
‘Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest
“Ah, fondest, blindest, weakest
Pg 268
Of utter sadnes
Of utter sadness
Pg 270
their ample virtue mew
their ample virtue mew.
Pg 271
ivies, interwine my hair
ivies, intertwine my hair
Pg 278
Follow you withersoever you go.
Follow you whithersoever you go.