The People to chastise: such and so great
A love for the Lord’s cause he breathed. He smote
Through Jordan; made his feet a way, and crossed
Again; raised with a twig the axe down—sunk
215 Beneath the stream; changed into vital meat
The deathful food; detained a second time,
Double in length, the rains; cleansed leprosies;
Entangled foes in darkness; and when one
Offcast and dead, by bandits’slaughter slain
220 His limbs, after his death, already hid
In sepulchre, did touch, he—light recalled—
Revived.
Isaiah, wealthy seer, to whom
The fount was oped,—so manifest his faith!
Poured from his mouth God’s word forth. Promised was
225 The Father’s will, bounteous through Christ; through him
It testified before the way of life,
And was approved: but him, though stainless found,
And undeserving, the mad People cut
With wooden saw in twain, and took away
230 With cruel death.
The holy Jeremy
Followed; whom the Eternal’s Virtue bade
Be prophet to the Gentiles, and him told
The future: who, because he brooded o’er
His People’s deeds illaudable, and said
235 (Speaking with voice presaging) that, unless
They had repented of betaking them
To deeds iniquitous against their slaves,
They should be captived, bore hard bonds, shut up
In squalid gaol; and, in the miry pit,
240 Hunger exhausted his decaying limbs.
But, after he did prove what they to hear
Had been unwilling, and the foes did lead
The People bound in their triumphal trains,
Hardly at length his wrinkled right hand lost
245 Its chains: it is agreed that by no death
Nor slaughter was the hero ta’en away.
Faithful Ezekiel, to whom granted was
Rich grace of speech, saw sinners’ secrets; wailed
His own afflictions; prayed for pardon; saw
250 The vengeance of the saints, which is to be
By slaughter; and, in Spirit wrapt, the place
Of the saints’ realm, its steps and accesses,
And the salvation of the flesh, he saw.