What tenderest hand uprears on high
The standard of Incarnate God?
Successive portents that deny
Her Son, who tramples? She who trod
On Satan erst with starlike scorn!
Ah! never Alp looked down through mist
As she, that whiter star of morn,
Through every cloud that darkens Christ!
Roll back the centuries:— who were those
That, age by age, their Lord denied?
Their seats they set with Mary's foes:—
They mocked the Mother as the Bride.
Of such was Arius; and of such
He whom the Ephesian Sentence felled,
Her Title triumphed. At the touch
Of Truth the insurgent rout was quelled.
Back, back the hosts of Hell were driven
As forth that sevenfold thunder rolled:—
And in the Church's mystic Heaven
There was great silence as of old.