Published 1835
Deplorable his lot who tills the ground,
His whole life long tills it, with heartless toil
Of villain-service, passing with the soil
To each new Master, like a steer or hound,
Or like a rooted tree, or stone earth-bound; 5
But mark how gladly, through their own domains,
The Monks relax or break these iron chains;
While Mercy, uttering, through their voice, a sound
Echoed in Heaven, cries out, "Ye Chiefs, abate
These legalized oppressions! Man—whose name 10
And nature God disdained not; Man—whose soul
Christ died for—cannot forfeit his high claim
To live and move exempt from all controul
Which fellow-feeling doth not mitigate!"
FOOTNOTES:
[124] The following note, referring to Sonnets IV., XII., and XIII., appears in the volume of 1835—entitled Yarrow Revisited, and other Poems—immediately after the poem St. Bees—
"The three following Sonnets are an intended addition to the 'Ecclesiastical Sketches,' the first to stand second; and the two that succeed, seventh and eighth, in the second part of the Series. (See the Author's Poems.) They are placed here as having some connection with the foregoing Poem."—Ed.
V
MONKS AND SCHOOLMEN
Record we too, with just and faithful pen,
That many hooded Cenobites[125] there are,
Who in their private cells have yet a care
Of public quiet; unambitious Men,
Counsellors for the world, of piercing ken; 5
Whose fervent exhortations from afar
Move Princes to their duty, peace or war;[126]
And oft-times in the most forbidding den
Of solitude, with love of science strong,
How patiently the yoke of thought they bear! 10
How subtly glide its finest threads along!
Spirits that crowd the intellectual sphere[127]
With mazy boundaries, as the astronomer
With orb and cycle girds the starry throng.