Yet not a finger did she lift
  To hold him from his fateful task,
  Though Satan oft essayed to sift
  Her soul as wheat, and bade her ask
  Somewhat from conscience as a gift.

  And when a serpent in his slime
  Crept to her ear with phrase polite,
  Prating of duty to her time
  And to her people, swift and white
  She turned and cursed him for his crime!

  She would have naught of all the brood
  Of temporizing, driveling shows
  Of men who Philip’s words withstood: 
  Against them all her love uprose,
  And all her pride of womanhood.

  XIII.

  She loved her kindred none the less,
  She loved her husband still the more,
  For well she knew that with distress
  He saw the heavy cross she bore
  With steadfast faith and tenderness.

  She kept her love intact, because
  She would not be a partisan;
  Not hers the voice that made the laws,
  Nor hers prerogative to ban,
  Or bolster them with her applause.

  No strife of jarring policies,
  No conflict of embittered states,
  No chart, defining by degrees
  Of latitude her country’s hates,
  Could change her friends to enemies.

  The motives ranged on either hand,
  Behind the war of word and will,
  Were such as she could understand
  And, with respect to all, fulfil
  Love’s broad and beautiful command.

  So, with all questions hushed to sleep,
  And all opinions put aside,
  She gave her loved ones to the keep
  Of God, whatever should betide,
  To bear her joy or bid her weep!

  XIV.

  Though Philip knew he wounded her,
  His faith to God and faith to man
  Bade him go forward, and incur
  Such cost as, since the world began,
  Has burdened Freedom’s harbinger.

  No heart or hand was his to flinch
  From ease or reputation lost;
  Nor waste of gold, nor hunger-pinch,
  Nor e’en his home’s black holocaust,
  Could stay his arm, though inch by inch,

  The maddened hosts of scorn and scath
  Should crowd him backward to defeat. 
  He would but strive with sterner wrath,
  And bless the hand that, soft and sweet,
  Withheld its hinderance from his path!

  XV.

  Still darker loomed the Southern cloud,
  While o’er its black and billowed face
  In furrowed fire the lightning ploughed,
  And ramping from its hiding-place
  Roared the wild thunder, fierce and loud!

  And still men chattered of their trade,
  And strove to banish their alarms;
  And some were puzzled, some afraid,
  And some held up their feeble arms
  In indignation while they prayed!

  And others weakly talked of schism
  As boon of God in place of war,
  And bared their foreheads for its chrism! 
  While direr than the mace of Thor,
  In mid-air hung the cataclysm