All-Saints

In a church which is furnish'd with mullion and gable,
    With altar and reredos, with gargoyle and groin,
The penitents' dresses are sealskin and sable,
    The odour of sanctity's eau-de-Cologne.

But only could Lucifer, flying from Hades,
    Gaze down on this crowd with its panniers and paints,
He would say, as he look'd at the lords and the ladies,
    "Oh, where is All-Sinners', if this is All-Saints'?"

Edmund Hodgson Yates

Edmund Hodgson Yates was a British journalist, novelist, and dramatist, best known for his work as the editor of The World, a society newspaper. Born on July 3, 1831, he contributed to various notable publications such as The Illustrated Times. He was also known for his friendship with Charles Dickens and his involvement in the founding of the Garrick Club. He passed away on May 20, 1894.

Edmund Hodgson Yates

English

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All Saints.

They are flocking from the East
And the West,
They are flocking from the North
And the South,
Every moment setting forth
From realm of snake or lion,
Swamp or sand,
Ice or burning;
Greatest and least,
Palm in hand
And praise in mouth,
They are flocking up the path
To their rest,
Up the path that hath
No returning.

Up the steeps of Zion
They are mounting,
Coming, coming,
Throngs beyond man's counting;
With a sound
Like innumerable bees
Swarming, humming
Where flowering trees
Many-tinted,
Many-scented,
All alike abound
With honey, -
With a swell
Like a blast upswaying unrestrainable
From a shadowed dell
To the hill-tops sunny, -
With a thunder
Like the ocean when in strength

Christina Georgina Rossetti

The Saints' Maying

Since green earth is awake
Let us now pastime take,
Not serving wantonness
Too well, nor niggardness,
Which monks of men would make.

But clothed like earth in green,
With jocund hearts and clean,
We will take hands and go
Singing where quietly blow
The flowers of Spring's demesne.

The cuckoo haileth loud
The open sky; no cloud
Doth fleck the earth's blue tent;
The land laughs, well content
To put off winter shroud.

Now, since 'tis Easter Day,
All Christians may have play;
The young Saints, all agaze
For Christ in Heaven's maze,
May laugh who wont to pray.

Then welcome to our round
They light on homely ground:--
Agnes, Saint Cecily,
Agatha, Dorothy,
Margaret, Hildegonde;

Next come with B...

Maurice Henry Hewlett

For Four Guilds: IV. The Bell-Ringers

The angels are singing like birds in a tree
In the organ of good St. Cecily:
And the parson reads with his hand upon
The graven eagle of great St. John:
But never the fluted pipes shall go
Like the fifes of an army all a-row,
Merrily marching down the street
To the marts where the busy and idle meet;
And never the brazen bird shall fly
Out of the window and into the sky,
Till men in cities and shires and ships
Look up at the living Apocalypse.

But all can hark at the dark of even
The bells that bay like the hounds of heaven,
Tolling and telling that over and under,
In the ways of the air like a wandering thunder,
The hunt is up over hills untrod:
For the wind is the way of the dogs of God:
From the tyrant's tower to the outlaw's den
Huntin...

Gilbert Keith Chesterton

Ecclesiastical Sonnets - Part III. - XLII - Cathedrals, Etc.

Open your gates, ye everlasting Piles!
Types of the spiritual Church which God hath reared;
Not loth we quit the newly-hallowed sward
And humble altar, 'mid your sumptuous aisles
To kneel, or thrid your intricate defiles,
Or down the nave to pace in motion slow;
Watching, with upward eye, the tall tower grow
And mount, at every step, with living wiles
Instinct to rouse the heart and lead the will
By a bright ladder to the world above.
Open your gates, ye Monuments of love
Divine! thou Lincoln, on thy sovereign hill!
Thou, stately York! and Ye, whose splendours cheer
Isis and Cam, to patient Science dear!

William Wordsworth

Where Is Your Dwelling, Ye Sainted? (Air.--Hasse.)

Where is your dwelling, ye Sainted?
    Thro' what Elysium more bright
Than fancy or hope ever painted,
    Walk ye in glory and light?
Who the same kingdom inherits?
    Breathes there a soul that may dare
Look to that world of Spirits,
    Or hope to dwell with you there?

Sages! who even in exploring
    Nature thro' all her bright ways,
Went like the Seraphs adoring,
    And veiled your eyes in the blaze--
Martyrs! who left for our reaping
    Truths you had sown in your blood--
Sinners! whom, long years of weeping
    Chastened from evil to good--

Maidens! who like the young Crescent,
    Turning away your pale brows
From earth and the light of the Present,
    Looked to your Heavenly Spouse--
Say, thro' what region enchante...

Thomas Moore

Ecclesiastical Sonnets - Part II. - XXIV - Saints

Ye, too, must fly before a chasing hand,
Angels and Saints, in every hamlet mourned!
Ah! if the old idolatry be spurned,
Let not your radiant Shapes desert the Land:
Her adoration was not your demand,
The fond heart proffered it, the servile heart;
And therefore are ye summoned to depart,
Michael, and thou, St. George, whose flaming brand
The Dragon quelled; and valiant Margaret
Whose rival sword a like Opponent slew:
And rapt Cecilia seraph-haunted Queen
Of harmony; and weeping Magdalene,
Who in the penitential desert met
Gales sweet as those that over Eden blew!

William Wordsworth