And standing on the altar high,
   “Lo, what a fiend is here! said he: 
 “One who sets reason up for judge
   Of our most holy mystery.”

 The weeping child could not be heard,
   The weeping parents wept in vain: 
 They stripped him to his little shirt,
   And bound him in an iron chain,

 And burned him in a holy place
   Where many had been burned before;
 The weeping parents wept in vain. 
   Are such thing done on Albion’s shore?

 A little girl lost

 Children of the future age,
 Reading this indignant page,
 Know that in a former time
 Love, sweet love, was thought a crime.

 In the age of gold,
 Free from winter’s cold,
 Youth and maiden bright,
 To the holy light,
 Naked in the sunny beams delight.

 Once a youthful pair,
 Filled with softest care,
 Met in garden bright
 Where the holy light
 Had just removed the curtains of the night.

 Then, in rising day,
 On the grass they play;
 Parents were afar,
 Strangers came not near,
 And the maiden soon forgot her fear.

 Tired with kisses sweet,
 They agree to meet
 When the silent sleep
 Waves o’er heaven’s deep,
 And the weary tired wanderers weep.

 To her father white
 Came the maiden bright;
 But his loving look,
 Like the holy book
 All her tender limbs with terror shook.

 “Ona, pale and weak,
 To thy father speak! 
 Oh the trembling fear! 
 Oh the dismal care
 That shakes the blossoms of my hoary hair!”

 The schoolboy

 I love to rise on a summer morn,
   When birds are singing on every tree;
 The distant huntsman winds his horn,
   And the skylark sings with me: 
   Oh what sweet company!

 But to go to school in a summer morn, —­
   Oh it drives all joy away! 
 Under a cruel eye outworn,
   The little ones spend the day
   In sighing and dismay.

 Ah then at times I drooping sit,
   And spend many an anxious hour;
 Nor in my book can I take delight,
   Nor sit in learning’s bower,
   Worn through with the dreary shower.

 How can the bird that is born for joy
   Sit in a cage and sing? 
 How can a child, when fears annoy,
   But droop his tender wing,
   And forget his youthful spring?

 Oh father and mother, if buds are nipped,
   And blossoms blown away;
 And if the tender plants are stripped
   Of their joy in the springing day,
   By sorrow and care’s dismay, —­

 How shall the summer arise in joy,
   Or the summer fruits appear? 
 Or how shall we gather what griefs destroy,
   Or bless the mellowing year,
   When the blasts of winter appear?

 To Tirzah

 Whate’er is born of mortal birth
 Must be consumed with the earth,
 To rise from generation free: 
 Then what have I to do with thee? 
 The sexes sprang from shame and pride,
 Blown in the morn, in evening died;
 But mercy changed death into sleep;
 The sexes rose to work and weep.