Unduly dwelt on, prolixly set forth! : 290 And awe indeed this man has touched me with. For time this letter wastes, thy time and mine; The very God! think, Abib; dost thou think? 66 Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself! And thou must love me who have died for thee !" 300 310 301. Jerusalem's repose shall make amends: he will avail himself of it to write a better letter than this one. A MARTYR'S EPITAPH. (FROM EASTER DAY.') I was born sickly, poor, and mean, At last my own release was earned: SOLILOQUY OF THE SPANISH CLOISTER. I. GR-R-R there go, my heart's abhorrence! Water your damned flower-pots, do! 2. At the meal we sit together: Salve tibi! I must hear Wise talk of the kind of weather, 3. Whew! We'll have our platter burnished, Ere 'tis fit to touch our chaps - 4. Saint, forsooth! While brown Dolores With Sanchicha, telling stories, Steeping tresses in the tank, Blue-black, lustrous, thick like horse-hairs, Can't I see his dead eye glow, Bright as 'twere a Barbary corsair's? (That is, if he'd let it show!) 5. When he finishes refection, Knife and fork he never lays Cross-wise, to my recollection, As do I, in Jesu's praise. I the Trinity illustrate, Drinking watered orange-pulp 6. Oh, those melons? If he's able We're to have a feast! so nice! How go on your flowers? None double? Strange ! — And I, too, at such trouble, 7。 There's a great text in Galatians, If I trip him just a-dying, Sure of heaven as sure can be, Spin him round and send him flying 8. Or, my scrofulous French novel On gray paper with blunt type ! Simply glance at it, you grovel Hand and foot in Belial's gripe: St. 5. the Arian: a follower of Arius (died 336 A.D.), who denied that the Son was co-essential and co-eternal with the Father. St. 7. text in Galatians: chap. v. 19-21, where are enumerated "the works of the flesh." There are seventeen named; he uses twenty-nine indefinitely; it's common in French to use trente-six for any pretty big number. If I trip him : What if I; and so in next stanza. a Manichee: a follower of Mani, who aimed to unite Parseeism, or Parsism, with Christianity. Pledge one's soul to him, yet leave Such a flaw in the indenture As he'd miss till, past retrieve, We're so proud of! Hy, Zy, Hine ... HOLY-CROSS DAY. ON WHICH THE JEWS WERE FORCED TO ATTEND AN ANNUAL CHRISTIAN SERMON IN ROME. ["Now was come about Holy-Cross Day, and now must my lord preach his first sermon to the Jews: as it was of old cared for in the merciful bowels of the Church, that, so to speak, a crumb, at least, from her conspicuous table here in Rome, should be, though but once yearly, cast to the famishing dogs, under-trampled and bespitten-upon beneath the feet of the guests. And a moving sight in truth, this, of so many of the besotted blind restif and ready-to-perish Hebrews! now maternally brought-nay (for He saith, 'Compel them to come in'), haled, as it were, by the head and hair, and against their obstinate hearts, to partake of the heavenly grace. What awakening, what striving with tears, what working of a yeasty conscience! Nor was my lord wanting to himself on so apt an occasion; witness the abundance of conversions which did incontinently reward him: though not to my lord be altogether the glory." - Diary by the Bishop's Secretary, 1600.] What the Jews really said, on thus being driven to church, was rather to this effect: 1 St. 9. Hy, Zy, Hine: represent the sound of the vesper bell. |