Sir John Oldcastle, Lord Cobham

by Alfred Lord Tennyson

　　

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My friend should meet me somewhere hereabout To take me to that hiding in the hills. I have broke their cage, no gilded one, I trow— I read no more the prisoner’s mute wail Scribbled or carved upon the pitiless stone; I find hard rocks, hard life, hard cheer, or none, For I am emptier than a friar’s brains; But God is with me in this wilderness, These wet black passes and foam-churning chasms— And God’s free air, and hope of better things. I would I knew their speech; not now to glean, Not now—I hope to do it—some scatter’d ears, Some ears for Christ in this wild field of Wales— But, bread, merely for bread. This tongue that wagg’d They said with such heretical arrogance Against the proud archbishop Arundel— So much God’s cause was fluent in it—is here But as a Latin Bible to the crowd; ‘Bara!’—what use? The Shepherd, when I speak, Vailing a sudden eyelid with his hard ‘Dim Saesneg’ passes, wroth at things of old— No fault of mine. Had he God’s word in Welsh He might be kindlier: happily come the day! Not least art thou, thou little Bethlehem In Judah, for in thee the Lord was born; Nor thou in Britain, little Lutterworth, Least, for in thee the word was born again. Heaven-sweet Evangel, ever-living word, Who whilome spakest to the South in Greek About the soft Mediterranean shores, And then in Latin to the Latin crowd, As good need was—thou hast come to talk our isle. Hereafter thou, fulfilling Pentecost, Must learn to use the tongues of all the world. Yet art thou thine own witness that thou bringest Not peace, a sword, a fire. What did he say, My frighted Wiclif-preacher whom I crost In flying hither? that one night a crowd Throng’d the waste field about the city gates: The king was on them suddenly with a host. Why there? they came to hear their preacher. Then Some cried on Cobham, on the good Lord Cobham; Ay, for they love me! but the king—nor voice Nor finger raised against him—took and hang’d, Took, hang’d and burnt—how many—thirty-nine— Call’d it rebellion—hang’d, poor friends, as rebels And burn’d alive as heretics! for your Priest Labels—to take the king along with him— All heresy, treason: but to call men traitors May make men traitors. Rose of Lancaster, Red in thy birth, redder with household war, Now reddest with the blood of holy men, Redder to be, red rose of Lancaster— If somewhere in the North, as Rumour sang Fluttering the hawks of this crown-lusting line— By firth and loch thy silver sister grow,* That were my rose, there my allegiance due. Self-starved, they say—nay, murder’d, doubtless dead. So to this king I cleaved: my friend was he, Once my fast friend: I would have given my life To help his own from scathe, a thousand lives To save his soul. He might have come to learn Our Wiclif’s learning: but the worldly Priests Who fear the king’s hard common-sense should find What rotten piles uphold their mason-work, Urge him to foreign war. O had he will’d I might have stricken a lusty stroke for him, But he would not; far liever led my friend Back to the pure and universal church, But he would not: whether that heirless flaw In his throne’s title make him feel so frail, He leans on Antichrist; or that his mind, So quick, so capable in soldiership, In matters of the faith, alas the while! More worth than all the kingdoms of this world, Runs in the rut, a coward to the Priest. Burnt—good Sir Roger Acton, my dear friend! Burnt too, my faithful preacher, Beverley! Lord give thou power to thy two witnesses! Lest the false faith make merry over them Two—nay but thirty-nine have risen and stand, Dark with the smoke of human sacrifice, Before thy light, and cry continually— Cry—against whom? Him, who should bear the sword Of Justice—what! the kingly, kindly boy; Who took the world so easily heretofore, My boon companion, tavern-fellow—him Who gibed and japed—in many a merry tale That shook our sides—at Pardoners, Summoners, Friars, absolution-sellers, monkeries And nunneries, when the wild hour and the wine Had set the wits aflame. Harry of Monmouth, Or Amurath of the East? Better to sink Thy fleurs-de-lys in slime again, and fling Thy royalty back into the riotous fits Of wine and harlotry—thy shame, and mine, Thy comrade—than to persecute the Lord, And play the Saul that never will be Paul. Burnt, burnt! and while this mitred Arundel Dooms our unlicensed preacher to the flame, The mitre-sanction’d harlot draws his clerks Into the suburb—their hard celibacy, Sworn to be veriest ice of pureness, molten Into adulterous living, or such crimes As holy Paul—a shame to speak of them— Among the heathen— Sanctuary granted To bandit, thief, assassin—yea to him Who hacks his mother’s throat—denied to him, Who finds the Saviour in his mother tongue. The Gospel, the Priest’s pearl, flung down to swine— The swine, lay-men, lay-women, who will come, God willing, to outlearn the filthy friar. Ah rather, Lord, than that thy Gospel, meant To course and range thro’ all the world, should be Tether’d to these dead pillars of the Church— Rather than so, if thou wilt have it so, Burst vein, snap sinew, and crack heart, and life Pass in the fire of Babylon! but how long, O Lord, how long! My friend should meet me here. Here is the copse, the fountain and—a Cross! To thee, dead wood, I bow not head nor knees. Rather to thee, green boscage, work of God, Black holly, and white-flower’d wayfaring-tree! Rather to thee, thou living water, drawn By this good Wiclif mountain down from heaven, And speaking clearly in thy native tongue— No Latin—He that thirsteth, come and drink! Eh! how I anger’d Arundel asking me, To worship Holy Cross! I spread mine arms, God’s work, I said, a cross of flesh and blood And holier. That was heresy. (My good friend By this time should be with me.) ‘Images?’ Bury them as God’s truer images Are daily buried.’ ‘ Heresy.—Penance?’ ‘Fast, Hairshirt and scourge-nay, let a man repent, Do penance in his heart, God hears him.’ ‘Heresy— Not shriven, not saved?’ ‘What profits an ill Priest Between me and my God? I would not spurn Good counsel of good friends, but shrive myself No, not to an Apostle.’ ‘Heresy.’ (My friend is long in coming.) ‘Pilgrimages?’ ‘Drink, bagpipes, revelling, devil’s-dances, vice. The poor man’s money gone to fat the friar. Who reads of begging saints in Scripture?’—‘Heresy ‘— (Hath he been here—not found me—gone again? Have I mislearnt our place of meeting?) ‘Bread— Bread left after the blessing?’ how they stared, That was their main test-question—glared at me! ‘He veil’d Himself in flesh, and now He veils His flesh in bread, body and bread together.’ Then rose the howl of all the cassock’d wolves, ‘No bread, no bread. God’s body!’ Archbishop, Bishop, Priors, Canons, Friars, bellringers, Parish-clerks— ‘No bread, no bread!’—‘Authority of the Church, Power of the keys!’—Then I, God help me, I So mock’d, so spum’d, so baited two whole days— I lost myself and fell from evenness, And rail’d at all the Popes, that ever since Sylvester shed the venom of world-wealth Into the church, had only prov’n themselves Poisoners, murderers. Well—God pardon all— Me, them, and all the world—yea, that proud Priest, That mock-meek mouth of utter Antichrist, That traitor to King Richard and the truth, Who rose and doom’d me to the fire. Amen! Nay, I can burn, so that the Lord of life Be by me in my death. Those three! the fourth Was like the Son of God! Not burnt were they. On them the smell of burning had not past. That was a miracle to convert the king. These Pharisees, this Caiaphas-Arundel What miracle could turn? He here again, He thwarting their traditions of Himself, He would be found a heretic to Himself, And doom’d to burn alive. So, caught, I burn. Burn? heathen men have borne as much as this, For freedom, or the sake of those they loved, Or some less cause, some cause far less than mine; For every other cause is less than mine. The moth will singe her wings, and singed return, Her love of light quenching her fear of pain— How now, my soul, we do not heed the fire? Faint-hearted? tut!—faint-stomach’d! faint as I am, God willing, I will burn for Him. Who comes? A thousand marks are set upon my head. Friend?—foe perhaps—a tussle for it then! Nay, but my friend. Thou art so well disguised, I knew thee not. Hast thou brought bread with thee? I have not broken bread for fifty hours. None? I am damn’d already by the Priest For holding there was bread where bread was none— No bread. My friends await me yonder? Yes. Lead on then. Up the mountain? Is it far? Not far. Climb first and reach me down thy hand. I am not like to die for lack of bread For I must live to testify by fire.**

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