From top to toe the Abbot shook, As the Fisherman armed his golden hook, And awfully were his features wrought By some dark dream or wakened thought. Look how the fearful felon gazes On the scaffold his country’s vengeance raises, When the lips are cracked and the jaws are dry With the thirst which only in death shall die: Mark the mariner’s frenzied frown As the swirling wherry settles down, When peril has numbed the sense and will, Though the hand and the foot may struggle still:
Wilder far was the Abbot’s glance, Deeper far was the Abbot’s trance: Fixed as a monument, still as air, He bent no knee, and he breathed no prayer But he signed—he knew not why or how,— The sign of the Cross on his clammy brow. There was turning of keys, and creaking of locks, As he stalked away with his iron box. ‘O ho! O ho! The cock doth crow; It is time for the Fisher to rise and go. Fair luck to the Abbot, fair luck to the shrine! He hath gnawed in twain my choicest line; Let him swim to the north, let him swim to the south, The Abbot will carry my hook in his mouth!’
The Abbot had preached for many years With as clear articulation As ever was heard in the House of Peers Against Emancipation: His words had made battalions quake, Had roused the zeal of martyrs, Had kept the Court an hour awake, And the King himself three-quarters: But ever since that hour, ’tis said, He stammered and he stuttered, As if an axe went through his head With every word he uttered. He stuttered o’er blessing, he stuttered o’er ban, He stuttered drunk or dry; And none but he and the Fisherman Could tell the reason why!
[ BOADICEA]
AN ODE When the British warrior-queen, Bleeding from the Roman rods, Sought, with an indignant mien, Counsel of her country’s gods,
Sage beneath a spreading oak Sat the Druid, hoary chief, Ev’ry burning word he spoke, Full of rage and full of grief.
‘Princess! if our aged eyes Weep upon thy matchless wrongs, ’Tis because resentment ties All the terrors of our tongues.