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Home  »  Lyra Sacra: A Book of Religious Verse  »  The Christian Stoic

Henry Charles Beeching, ed. (1859–1919). Lyra Sacra: A Book of Religious Verse. 1903.

By Thomas Campion (?–1619)

The Christian Stoic

 
THE MAN 1 of life upright,
  Whose guiltless heart is free
From all dishonest deeds,
  Or thought of vanity;
 
The man whose silent days        5
  In harmless joys are spent,
Whom hopes cannot delude
  Nor sorrow discontent:
 
That man needs neither towers
  Nor armour for defence,        10
Nor secret vaults to fly
  From thunder’s violence:
 
He only can behold
  With unaffrighted eyes
The horrors of the deep        15
  And terrors of the skies.
 
Thus scorning all the cares
  That fate or fortune brings,
He makes the heaven his book,
  His wisdom heavenly things,        20
 
Good thoughts his only friends,
  His wealth a well-spent age,
The earth his sober inn
  And quiet pilgrimage.
 
Note 1. The name of Campion was unknown to this generation, although famous in his own, until first Mr Arber, and then Mr Bullen, reprinted the verses from his Song-Books. His praise has been well expressed in the line that Peele addressed to him:—
                            “Thou
That richly cloth’st conceit with well-made words.”
His thought is luminous and his verse transparent. He is not perhaps quite so happy in religious as in love poetry. [back]