-
In honour of St. Alphonsus Rodriguez
-
Laybrother of the Society of Jesus
- Honour is flashed off exploit, so we say;
- And those strokes once that gashed flesh or galled shield
- Should tongue that time now, trumpet now that field,
- And, on the fighter, forge his glorious day.
- On Christ they do and on the martyr may;
- But be the war within, the brand we wield
- Unseen, the heroic breast not outward-steeled,
- Earth hears no hurtle then from fiercest fray.
- Yet God (that hews mountain and continent,
- Earth, all, out; who, with trickling increment,
- Veins violets and tall trees makes more and more)
- Could crowd career with conquest while there went
- Those years and years by of world without event
- That in Majorca Alfonso watched the door.
