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Ecclesiastical Sonnets - Part III. - XXXVI - Emigrant French Clergy

By William Wordsworth

Topics: classic

Even while I speak, the sacred roofs of France Are shattered into dust; and self-exiled From altars threatened, leveled, or defiled, Wander the Ministers of God, as chance Opens a way for life, or consonance Of faith invites. More welcome to no land The fugitives than to the British strand, Where priest and layman with the vigilance Of true compassion greet them. Creed and test Vanish before the unreserved embrace Of catholic humanity: distrest They came, and, while the moral tempest roars Throughout the Country they have left, our shores Give to their Faith a fearless resting-place.

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"Even while I speak, the sacred roofs of France..."

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Author:William Wordsworth

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"Even while I speak, the sacred roofs of France..." by William Wordsworth

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William Wordsworth

About William Wordsworth

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) was an English Romantic poet who launched the movement with Samuel Taylor Coleridge in "Lyrical Ballads" (1798). His poems—including "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud" and "Tintern Abbey"—championed nature, memory, and the language of common speech.

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