Poems from Eastern Sources: The Steadfast Prince; and Other Poems

by Richard Chenevix Trench

THE MONK AND SINNER.

In days of old, when holy Prophets trod

This earth, the living oracles of God,

What time one such his mission did fulfil,

There lived a youth, a prodigy of ill:

So foul the tablets of his heart and black,

That Satan’s self from them had started back.

Him as the plague sought every soul to shun,

At him in horror pointed every one;