XXXI.

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.