Poem by Louise Imogen Guiney

Heathenesse

NO round boy-satyr, racing from the mere,
Shakes on the mountain-lawn his dripping head
This many a May, your sister being dead,
Ye Christian folk! your sister great and dear.
To breathe her name, to think how sad-sincere
Was all her searching, straying, dreaming, dread,
How of her natural night was Plato bred,
A star to keep the ways of honor clear,
Who will not sigh for her? who can forget
Not only unto campèd Israel,
Nor martyr-maids that as a bridegroom met
The Roman lion’s roar, salvation fell?
To Him be most of praise that He is yet
Your God thro’ gods not inaccessible.

1. Florentin
2. Writ in My Lord Clarendon’s “History of the Rebellion”
3. Vergniaud in the Tumbril
4. A Seventeenth-Century Song
5. For Izaak Walton

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