First printed in 1830, not in 1833.
This sonnet was addressed to John Mitchell Kemble, the well-known
Editor of the Beowulf and other Anglo-Saxon poems. He intended to go
into the Church, but was never ordained, and devoted his life to early
English studies. See memoir of him in Dict, of Nat. Biography.
My hope and heart is with thee—thou wilt be
A latter Luther, and a soldier-priest
To scare church-harpies from the master’s feast;
Our dusted velvets have much need of thee:
Thou art no Sabbath-drawler of old saws,
Distill’d from some worm-canker’d homily;
But spurr’d at heart with fieriest energy
To embattail and to wall about thy cause
With iron-worded proof, hating to hark
The humming of the drowsy pulpit-drone
Half God’s good sabbath, while the worn-out clerk
Brow-beats his desk below. Thou from a throne
Mounted in heaven wilt shoot into the dark
Arrows of lightnings. I will stand and mark.