| W. Garrett Horder, comp. The Poets’ Bible: New Testament. 1895. | | | | St. John the Baptist Beheaded in Prison (III.) | | From the Parisian Breviary |
| | Translated by Isaac Williams
BEHOLD, the price of courtly dance, | |
| The fruit of the forbidden glance, | |
| The head of Christ’s great harbinger! | |
| The voice, which did repentance call, | |
| From sylvans rude to palace hall; | 5 |
| Hushèd is that voice and tongue, and ne’er again shall stir. | |
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| Nay, is that tongue for ever stillèd? | |
| Nay, it anew his ears hath fill’d, | |
| That they can nothing hear no more; | |
| Abroad the Baptist’s shadow stalks, | 10 |
| In secret to his spirit talks | |
| Of that incestuous crime more sternly than before. | |
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| But holy John!—he was a cloud | |
| Pregnant with light, which earth-ward bow’d, | |
| Big with the rays of dawning day, | 15 |
| Disclosing the eternal Sun; | |
| As its effulgence now begun, | |
| Then hasted he himself in air to melt away. | |
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| For Thine alone, whose footsteps dwell | |
| In seas of light inscrutable, | 20 |
| The glory and the praise is Thine; | |
| Thee the Father everlasting, | |
| And Thee the Incarnate Son we sing, | |
| And Thee who bindest all, the Paraclete Divine. | | | | |
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