And to assuage his woe, thick angel-flight,
With seals from Paradise, hover'd around.
Howbeit hung back the sharpest scene, for which
Oft roam'd his eye to bars of his sad cell;
Which at a set time, on a sudden drawn,
Swiftly descended to his waste embrace,
A female form, with raven tresses loose,
His wedded spouse, who him with frenzied strength
Grasp'd, and with giddy rapture on him glar'd.
A trance of joy her beauteous brow across,
To staid disconsolation sternly changed,
As with a sifting look of love and woe,
She pried into her widowy realm of grief :
And in the tight-drawn moment, reft amain,
Th' accumulate horror of the awful hour
Upon her fell: encounter'd, not sustain'd.
Kind nature sank; and she from swoon to swoon
Soon plung'd, in utter impotency lost,
The quick sensation of her matchless wrongs.
Not so his little boys: who, piercing cries
From lips convulsed with affright, shot forth;
And springing to his breast, girded him round,
With grief distraught, no prudent bounds that knew,
Nor frozen guard of riper years: the sight
So mournful, the stern priesthood saw uncar'd;
The fingers wrenching of the wilder'd babes,
Their piteous grasp unclasp'd, and cast them forth.
O who shall tend their rank, and untried youth!
But this the ruthless wasters reck not, while
They, in the sight of myriads, guarded out
Unto the rested stake, th' angelic sire:
To which, shirted in lawn, him fast they wedge
In cruel fire-proof chains: where in a brief
And fearful interval, a furnace rag'd
Of tenfold strength. Not such a welcome glow
As matron raises, winter's snow amid,
Her spouse's hand to fill: or harmless blaze
Of orchard prunings, fir'd of boys at play :-
But that whose hideous crashing thirsts for blood,
Unslack'd; and whose exasp'rate ardour crack'd
Fibre and calcin'd joint, with hellish noise;
And thronging onward, hugg'd its martyr close,
Altering his visage into such dread form
As shock'd the gazer: and he straight the flame
Felt reach into his soul. Lading of pain,
And torment unendurable. And as
The counter-pang extreme of cold or heat,
Smacks the same direful relish to the sense;
And in sensation's volume multiform,
The o'erwhelming mixture of excruciate tests,
To one grief mounts. Therefore he shrank, as if
The globe and stars press'd down upon his soul,
Coffining his breath, crushing the marrow juice
From out his sockets. The consummate height
Of torture: wherewith he inly admired
How prolix life held her tenacious gripe.
And 'mid those endless hours of perfect pain,
Yearn'd for intense that sweetest sleep of death,
The gloomy power direst to man, but who
A seraph in that earthly hell might seem.
Thus far'd Lord Cobham, while his vip'rous foes
Strove to enlarge his woe: and not content
With present sorrow, strain'd t' accumulate high
Futurity upon his sainted head.
And thus the brood of Tophet, ripe in lust,
Would drain the bitterness of heaven down
Upon that sadden'd heart: while thus they rage.
"Let every nerve more quick with life become,
"And taste of anguish most exalted pang! !
"Let it drink up thy spirit; let the hate
"Of holiest church lie heavy at thy soul.
"May lofty vapours, and effulgent stars
"Curse thee;
"May sainted virgins, mystic brethren,
"May the evangelists of potent Christ
May thy children frown on thee in hell, and
May th' eternal heavens and all their strength "Curse thee;
"May thy soul, reft of Christ, by fiends be dragg'd "To chaos, and perdition, ceaselessly.-"
And more but 'midst these execrations wild,
And while th' insatiate furnace bellowing blar'd,
Th' intrepid spirit fled; scaping well pleas'd
To the eternal Sabbath* of the blest.
Meanwhile the sire of darkness,† cowering grim,
The hellish spot of heat and blood o'erwing'd,
Skreening the cruel trace, and hushing up
The memory of the deed: which but suspect
In later times, the mettle of each hind
And ragged thrall in England, had arose
In wrath imperious; and indignant pluck'd,
At its own hand, a sweet and brief revenge.
But thus the general nerve of searching thought
Enfixt, and sweetly tun'd of young reform,
Sever'd in twain; sensation paus'd and stopt.
And Cobham's name effaced, the mystic beast
Of Rome, in horrid triumph snuffs the air,
Stretching his hideous and insatiate throat:
* i. e. Rest. Anno. 1417.
And walks the length and broadness of the land, More than a king; and spreads his stature huge In the flar'd eye of the abused state.
While the o'er-reaching angel, prince of the air, Using his hour, and blindness strewing round, With sable banners, hides the collied sun.
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