“Libera Nos, o Domine!”
What! ye hold yourselves as freemen?
Tyrants love just such as ye!
Go! abate your lofty manner!
Write upon the State’s old banner,
“A furore Normanorum,
Libera nos, O Domine!”
Sink before the federal altar,
Each one low, on bended knee,
Pray, with lips that sob and falter,
This prayer from the coward’s psalter,—
“A furore Normanorum,
Libera nos, O Domine!”
But ye hold that quick repentance
In the Northern mind will be;
This repentance comes no sooner
Than the robbers did, at Luna!
“A furore Normanorum,
Libera nos, O Domine!”
He repented him:—the Bishop
Gave him absolution free;
Poured upon him sacred chrism
In the pomp of his baptism.
“A furore Normanorum,
Libera nos, O Domine!”
He repented;—then he sickened!
Was he pining for the sea?
In extremis was he shriven,
The viaticum was given,
“A furore Normanorum,
Libera nos, O Domine!”
Then the old cathedral’s choir
Took the plaintive minor key;
With the Host upraised before him,
Down the marble aisles they bore him;
“A furore Normanorum,
Libera nos, O Domine!”
While the bishop and the abbot—
All the monks of high degree,
Chanting praise to the Madonna,
Came to do him Christian honor!
“A furore Normanorum,
Libera nos, O Domine!”
Now the miserere’s cadence,
Takes the voices of the sea;
As the music-billows quiver,
See the dead freebooter shiver!
“A furore Normanorum,
Libera nos, O Domine!”
Is it that these intonations
Thrill him thus from head to knee?
Lo, his cerements burst asunder!
’Tis a sight of fear and wonder!
“A furore Normanorum,
Libera nos, O Domine!”
Fierce, he stands before the bishop,
Dark as shape of Destinie.
Hark! a shriek ascends, appalling,—
Down the prelate goes—dead—falling!
“A furore Normanorum,
Libera nos, O Domine!”
Hastings lives! He was but feigning!
What! Repentant? Never he!
Down he smites the priests and friars,
And the city lights with fires!
“A furore Normanorum,
Libera nos, O Domine!”
Ah! the children and the maidens,
’Tis in vain they strive to flee!
Where the white-haired priests lie bleeding,
Is no place for woman’s pleading.
“A furore Normanorum,
Libera nos, O Domine!”
Louder swells the frightful tumult—
Pallid Death holds revelrie!
Dies the organ’s mighty clamor,
By the horseman’s iron hammer!
“A furore Normanorum,
Libera nos, O Domine!”
So they thought that he’d repented!
Had they nailed him to the tree,
He had not deserved their pity,
And they had not—lost their city.
“A furore Normanorum,
Libera nos, O Domine!”
For the moral in this story,
Which is plain as truth can be:
If we trust the North’s relenting,
We shall shriek-too late repenting—
“A furore Normanorum,
Libera nos, O Domine!” [1]
[1] For this incident in the life of the sea-robber, Hastings, see Milman’s History of Latin Christianity.