SONNET VII.
Creak, ye black forests! and ye mournful forms
That flit like hooded monks across the bare
And desolate wilderness, urge through the air
Your cloudy legions, O ye gloomy storms!
Dark ministers of Night! I hear the roll
Of rising winds, and in the lonely vale
The melancholy Autumn breathes her wail,
Yet pleasant is her sadness to my soul.
See! where the Old Year bears her in his arms:
The pale Cordelia and the trembling Lear:
Will he not strew with heather her sad bier,
And keep her safe from Winter's rude alarms?
'Vex not his ghost!' his life will soon be o'er,
The 'sweet, low voice' he loved he hears no more.
SONNET VIII.
Oh! when shall love to Thee be my best guide,
Redeemer, Saviour! ever blessed Lord!
By all the powers in earth and heaven adored?
When flowed the dear blood from Thy wounded side—
By heaven forsaken and by man denied—
Why were its crimson streams so freely poured,
If man by love was not to be restored?
O mighty theme! that doth debase my pride,
And pour contempt on all the things of earth:
If angels are not faultless in Thy sight,
How much less we who travail from our birth,
Walking apart from Love and its clear light?
Yet not for them, but us, was He once slain,
That we, redeemed from sin, might live again.
SONNET IX.
Mourn, mourn, voice of the wilderness!
For Him who shed His precious blood for me:
Jesu Redemptor! Lamb of Calvary!
The heir of glory, anguish and distress;
Oh! how shall mortal tongue the love express
With which Thou didst so love us, as to be
Our sacrifice upon the accursed tree,
Bearing the burden of our wickedness.
O ye wild winds! and wilder blasts that wail
Amid the ebon darkness, have ye known
Man's dark iniquity that thus ye moan
In hollow accents through the lonely vale?
Alas! my soul, thy sins slew God's dear Son:
Kyrie eleeson! Christe eleeson!
SONNET X.
TRISAGION.
'Therefore with angels and arch-angels, laud
And magnify His great and glorious Name,
Who, to redeem the world from ruin, came,
Saying: Holy, holy, holy Lord God!
Heaven and earth made clean by Thy dear blood,
Are ever full of Thy great majesty:
All glory be to Thee, O Lord, Most High!'
So sang the angelic choir, the while I stood
Listening the far response: 'Not unto us,
Not unto us, O Lord! but unto Thee
Be all the glory, Lamb of Calvary!
Quoniam tu solus Dominius!'
So Love doth rule—the high behest of heaven:
And Love is ten-fold Love that waits on sins forgiven.