Unduly dwelt on, prolixly set forth!
Nor I myself discern in what is writ
Good cause for the peculiar interest

And awe indeed this man has touched me with.
Perhaps the journey's end, the weariness
Had wrought upon me first. I met him thus:
I crossed a ridge of short sharp broken hills
Like an old lion's cheek teeth. Out there came
A moon made like a face with certain spots
Multiform, manifold, and menacing:
Then a wind rose behind me. So we met
In this old sleepy town at unaware,
The man and I. I send thee what is writ.
Regard it as a chance, a matter risked
To this ambiguous Syrian: he may lose,
Or steal, or give it thee with equal good.
Jerusalem's repose shall make amends

For time this letter wastes, thy time and mine;
Till when, once more thy pardon and farewell!

The very God! think, Abib; dost thou think?
So, the All-Great, were the All-Loving too
So, through the thunder comes a human voice
Saying, "O heart I made, a heart beats here!
Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself!
Thou hast no power nor may'st conceive of mine :
But love I gave thee, with myself to love,

And thou must love me who have died for thee!"
The madman saith He said so: it is strange.

290

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,
A slave: no misery could screen
The holders of the pearl of price
From Cæsar's envy; therefore twice
I fought with beasts, and three times saw
My children suffer by his law;

At last my own release was earned:
I was some time in being burned,
But at the close a Hand came through
The fire above my head, and drew
My soul to Christ, whom now I see.
Sergius, a brother, writes for me
This testimony on the wall-
For me, I have forgot it all.

SOLILOQUY OF THE SPANISH CLOISTER.

I.

GR-R-R there go, my heart's abhorrence!
Water your damned flower-pots, do!

If hate killed men, Brother Lawrence,
God's blood, would not mine kill you!
What? your myrtle-bush wants trimming?
Oh, that rose has prior claims —
Needs its leaden vase filled brimming?
Hell dry you up with its flames !

2.

At the meal we sit together:

Salve tibi! I must hear Wise talk of the kind of weather, Sort of season, time of year: Not a plenteous cork-crop: scarcely Dare we hope oak-galls, I doubt: What's the Latin name for "parsley"? What's the Greek name for Swine's Snout?

Whew!

3.

We'll have our platter burnished,

Laid with care on our own shelf!

With a fire-new spoon we're furnished,
And a goblet for ourself,

Rinsed like something sacrificial

Ere 'tis fit to touch our chaps – Marked with L. for our initial ! (He-he! There his lily snaps !)

4.

Saint, forsooth! While brown Dolores
Squats outside the Convent bank

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.

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.

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:

St. 9. Hy, Zy, Hine: represent the sound of the vesper bell.