The Legends of Saint Patrick | Page 6

by the most
critical of its trials. In him a great character had been built on the
foundations of a devout childhood, and of a youth ennobled by

adversity. Everywhere we trace the might and the sweetness which
belonged to it, the versatile mind yet the simple heart, the varying tact
yet the fixed resolve, the large design taking counsel for all, yet the
minute solicitude for each, the fiery zeal yet the genial temper, the skill
in using means yet the reliance on God alone, the readiness in action
with the willingness to wait, the habitual self-possession yet the
outbursts of an inspiration which raised him above himself, the abiding
consciousness of authority--an authority in him, but not of him--and yet
the ever-present humility. Above all, there burned in him that
boundless love, which seems the main constituent of the Apostolic
character. It was love for God; but it was love for man also, an
impassioned love, and a parental compassion. It was not for the
spiritual weal alone of man that he thirsted. Wrong and injustice to the
poor he resented as an injury to God. His vehement love for the poor is
illustrated by his "Epistle to Coroticus," reproaching him with his
cruelty, as well as by his denunciations of slavery, which piracy had
introduced into parts of Ireland. No wonder that such a character should
have exercised a talismanic power over the ardent and sensitive race
among whom he laboured, a race "easy to be drawn, but impossible to
be driven," and drawn more by sympathy than even by benefits. That
character can only be understood by one who studies, and in a right
spirit, that account of his life which he bequeathed to us shortly before
its close--the "Confession of Saint Patrick." The last poem in this series
embodies its most characteristic portions, including the visions which it
records.
The "Tripartite Life" thus ends: --"After these great miracles, therefore,
after resuscitating the dead, after healing lepers, and the blind, and the
deaf, and the lame, and all diseases; after ordaining bishops, and priests,
and deacons, and people of all orders in the Church; after teaching the
men of Erin, and after baptising them; after founding churches and
monasteries; after destroying idols and images and Druidical arts, the
hour of death of Saint Patrick approached. He received the body of
Christ from the Bishop Tassach, according to the counsel of the Angel
Victor. He resigned his spirit afterwards to Heaven, in the one hundred
and twentieth year of his age. His body is still here in the earth, with
honour and reverence. Though great his honour here, greater honour

will be to him in the Day of Judgment, when judgment will be given on
the fruit of his teaching, as of every great Apostle, in the union of the
Apostles and Disciples of Jesus; in the union of the Nine Orders of
Angels, which cannot be surpassed; in the union of the Divinity and
Humanity of the Son of God; in the union, which is higher than all
unions, of the Holy Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost."
0. DE VERE.
THE LEGENDS OF SAINT PATRICK.
THE BAPTISM OF ST. PATRICK.
"How can the babe baptised be
Where font is none and water none?"

Thus wept the nurse on bended knee,
And swayed the Infant in the
sun.
"The blind priest took that Infant's hand:
With that small hand, above
the ground
He signed the Cross. At God's command
A fountain rose
with brimming bound.
"In that pure wave from Adam's sin
The blind priest cleansed the
Babe with awe;
Then, reverently, he washed therein
His old,
unseeing face, and saw!
"He saw the earth; he saw the skies,
And that all-wondrous Child
decreed
A pagan nation to baptise,
To give the Gentiles light
indeed."
Thus Secknall sang. Far off and nigh
The clansmen shouted loud and
long;
While every mother tossed more high
Her babe, and glorying
joined the song.
THE DISBELIEF OF MILCHO,
OR, SAINT PATRICK'S ONE
FAILURE.
ARGUMENT.

Fame of St. Patrick goes ever before him, and men of
goodwill
believe gladly; but Milcho, a mighty merchant,
and one given wholly
to pride and greed, wills to
disbelieve. St. Patrick sends him greeting
and gifts;
but he, discovering that the prophet welcomed by all
had
once been his slave, hates him the more.
Notwithstanding, he fears
that when that prophet
arrives, he, too, may be forced to believe,
though
against his will. He resolves to set fire to his
castle and all
his wealth, and make new fortunes in far
lands. The doom of Milcho,
who willed to disbelieve.
When now at Imber Dea that precious bark
Freighted with Erin's
future, touched the sands
Just where a river, through a woody vale

Curving, with duskier current clave the sea,
Patrick, the Island's great
inheritor,
His perilous voyage past, stept forth and knelt
And
blessed his God. The peace of those green meads
Cradled 'twixt
purple hills and purple deep,
Seemed