DECEMBER EIGHTH, 1869.

There came an hour, and words were uttered then
That live to-day and echo evermore.
One spoke them to a knot of simple men,
Who simply took the simple sense they bore:
A promise—such as never tongue or pen
Of sage oracular had made before;
And a design no wisdom could have planned,
Save His who holds the nations in his hand.

II.

Had less than God so spoken, he had been
The wildest of all dreamers. What! to make
A poor rude fisher, who had never seen
A gloom upon his Galilæan lake
But feared the menace of its boding mien,
A rock no surge should fret, no tempest shake—
The baffled ages foaming at its feet
The broken malice of their ceaseless beat!

III.

God saith; and who shall gainsay? Devils first;
Then fools, their ready dupes. To these, forsooth,
'Tis nobler to resist, and dare the worst,
Than own the gentle majesty of truth—
As came the church to free a world accurst,
And heal its heartache, and renew its youth:
A spring to thaw the universal frost—
Fire-dowered from her natal Pentecost.

IV.

But principle is something to defy,
That may not swerve to give a falsehood breath;
Or call masked anarchy its stout ally,
And offer God an honorable death.
And so along the ages rolls a cry—
The din of onset at the gates of faith:
'Tis Arius now, now Luther heads the fray;
Or bristles up the hydra of to-day.

And patient Rome sits victor over all:
Her strength in seeming feebleness increased.
She smiles to hear "the storm against the wall,"
And lavished names of harlot and of beast,
And prophets raving of her speedy fall:
While Satan counts his failures with at least
The joy that such solidity of rock
Draws none the fewer to the fatal shock.

VI.

Press on, close in, ye gallant ranks of hell!
Concentrating the might ye think to bow.
Stood ever Holy Church, do records tell,
More one, more conscious, more herself than now?
When was the chair of Peter loved so well?
Wore ever pontiff a serener brow?
He calls: earth hears; her utmost realms resound;
And lo, a thousand mitres gird him round!

VII.

And they who trembled, and had been content
To scorn with quiet mirth a voice so weak,
Are forced, they find, to yield their panic vent.
"Another Trent!" rings out the indignant shriek;
"This nineteenth century, another Trent!"
'Tis not so sweet to have the Master speak,
When passion, weary of his peaceful sway,
No longer deems it freedom to obey.

VIII.

But speak he will—the blessed words of life;
How welcome to the soul that thirsts to know,
Or views alarmed the too successful strife
Of earth with heaven—truth's ebb and error's flow.
We murmur through, our tears, "Decay is rife!
The sound, the old, the sacred—all will go!"
Fond fear! Whatever faithless thrones expect,
Christ's kingdom stands: he garners his elect.

IX.

The serpent writhes—his last convulsions these—
Beneath the foot that tramples his crushed head.
O Lady! worker of thy Son's decrees,
Thy Rome, thy Pius trust thee. Deign to shed
Thy gracious light, lone star of troubled seas,
At whose sweet ray the ancient darkness fled!
The serpent writhes beneath thee: deign to show
He is indeed the Woman's vanquished foe!

This day we hymn thy victory; and claim
Thy prayer omnipotent. Nor let it rise
For us alone, that boast to love thy name,
But those, unhappy, that have dared despise!
Who came for them, by thee it was He came,
Through thee must break unclouded to their eyes.
Ah Mother's Heart! How long, then, wilt thou wait
Till all thy children sing "Immaculate"?

B. D. H.