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The Martyrs' Idyl, and Shorter Poems

Chapter 8: THE CHANTRY
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About This Book

The collection opens with a long dramatic idyl that stages the arrest, trial, and martyrdom of a young Christian woman and the spiritual awakening of a soldier, rendered in scene-like poetic dialogue and sacred allusion. The shorter poems that follow range from pastoral and elegiac lyrics to devotional and liturgical pieces, meditating on faith, loss, memory, nature, and ritual with formal diction, musical cadences, and classical and religious imagery.


THE CHANTRY

A LOYAL lady young; a knight for honor slain:
All beauty and all quiet sealed for aye upon
Their images that lie in coif and morion.
A moment since, through rifts and pauses of the rain,
The day shot in; the lancet window showered again
Its moth-like play of silver, rose, and sapphire; shone
What arms of warring duchies glorious, bygone:
Lombardy, Desmond, Malta, suitored Aquitaine!
The while aloft in Art’s immortal summer-tide,
Fair is the carven hostel, fortunate either guest,
And men of moodier England pass, and hear outside
Fury of toil alone, and fate’s diurnal storm,
Hearts with the King of Saints, hearts beating light and warm!
To these your courage give, that these attain your rest.