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Home  »  Lyra Sacra: A Book of Religious Verse  »  To St Margaret

Henry Charles Beeching, ed. (1859–1919). Lyra Sacra: A Book of Religious Verse. 1903.

By Henry Constable (1562–1613)

To St Margaret

 
FAIR Amazon of heaven, who took’st in hand
St Michael and St George to imitate,
And for a tyrant’s love transformed to hate
Wast for thy lily faith retained in band:
Alone on foot and with thy naked hand        5
Thou didst like Michael and his host, and that
For which on horse arm’d George we celebrate,
Whilst thou like them a dragon didst withstand.
Behold my soul, shut in my body’s jail,
The which the drake of hell gapes to devour!        10
Teach me, O Virgin, how thou didst prevail!
Virginity, thou say’st, was all thine aid.
Give me then purity instead of power,
And let my soul, maid chaste, pass for a maid.