Ye, too, must fly before a chasing hand,Angels and Saints, in every hamlet mourned!Ah! if the old idolatry be spurned,Let not your radiant Shapes desert the Land:Her adoration was not your demand,The fond heart proffered it, the servile heart;And therefore are ye summoned to depart,Michael, and thou, St. George, whose flaming brandThe Dragon quelled; and valiant MargaretWhose … [Read more...] about Ecclesiastical Sonnets – Part II. – XXIV – Saints, By: William Wordsworth
Ecclesiastical Sonnets – Part II. – XXIII – Continued, By: William Wordsworth
Yet many a Novice of the cloistral shade,And many chained by vows, with eager gleeThe warrant hail, exulting to be free;Like ships before whose keels, full long embayedIn polar ice, propitious winds have madeUnlooked-for outlet to an open sea,Their liquid world, for bold discovery,In all her quarters temptingly displayed!Hope guides the young; but when the old must passThe … [Read more...] about Ecclesiastical Sonnets – Part II. – XXIII – Continued, By: William Wordsworth
Ecclesiastical Sonnets – Part II. – XXII – The Same Subject, By: William Wordsworth
The lovely Nun (submissive, but more meekThrough saintly habit than from effort dueTo unrelenting mandates that pursueWith equal wrath the steps of strong and weak)Goes forth unveiling timidly a cheekSuffused with blushes of celestial hue,While through the Convent's gate to open viewSoftly she glides, another home to seek.Not Iris, issuing from her cloudy shrine,An Apparition … [Read more...] about Ecclesiastical Sonnets – Part II. – XXII – The Same Subject, By: William Wordsworth
Ecclesiastical Sonnets – Part II. – XXI – Dissolution Of The Monasteries, By: William Wordsworth
Threats come which no submission may assuage,No sacrifice avert, no power dispute;The tapers shall be quenched, the belfries mute,And, 'mid their choirs unroofed by selfish rage,The warbling wren shall find a leafy cage;The gadding bramble hang her purple fruit;And the green lizard and the gilded newtLead unmolested lives, and die of age.The owl of evening and the woodland … [Read more...] about Ecclesiastical Sonnets – Part II. – XXI – Dissolution Of The Monasteries, By: William Wordsworth
Ecclesiastical Sonnets – Part II. – XX – Monastic Voluptuousness, By: William Wordsworth
Yet more, round many a Convent's blazing fireUnhallowed threads of revelry are spun;There Venus sits disguised like a Nun,While Bacchus, clothed in semblance of a Friar,Pours out his choicest beverage high and higherSparkling, until it cannot choose but runOver the bowl, whose silver lip hath wonAn instant kiss of masterful desireTo stay the precious waste. Through every … [Read more...] about Ecclesiastical Sonnets – Part II. – XX – Monastic Voluptuousness, By: William Wordsworth