W. Garrett Horder, comp. The Poets’ Bible: New Testament. 1895.
Peter and Cornelius
John Keble (17921866)G
Just trickling from its mossy bed,
Streaking the heath-clad hill
With a bright emerald thread.
What rocks she shall o’erleap or rend,
How far in ocean’s swell
Her freshening billows send?
The bulwark of some mighty realm,
Bear navies to and fro
With monarchs at their helm.
Some sister nymph, beside her urn
Reclining night and day,
Mid reeds and mountain fern,
When many a moor and glen are past,
Then in the wide sea end
Their spotless lives at last?
It springs in silence where it will,
Springs out of sight, and flows
At first a lonely rill:
From thousand sympathetic hearts,
Together swelling high
Their chant of many parts.
The good Cornelius knelt alone,
Nor dream’d his prayers and tears
Would help a world undone.
The lov’d Apostle to his Lord
In silent thought aloof
For heavenly vision soar’d.
His wistful brow was upward raised,
Where, like an Angel’s train,
The burnish’d water blaz’d.
The soldier in his chosen bower,
Where all his eye survey’d
Seem’d sacred in that hour.
Yet brethren true in dearest love
Were they—and now they share
Fraternal joys above.
They see the Gentile spirits press,
Brightening their high estate
With dearer happiness.
Shone ever with such deathless gleam,
Or when did perils brav’d
So sweet to veterans seem?