Tame dastard slaves! who your profession shame,
And fix disgrace on our great founder's name.
Think what late sectaries (an ignoble crew,
Not worthy to be ranked in sin with you)
Inspired with lofty wickedness, durst do:
How from his throne they hurled a monarch down,
And doubly eased him of both life and crown:
They scorned in covert their bold act to hide,
In open face of heaven the work they did,
And braved its vengeance, and its powers defied.
This is his son, and mortal too like him;
Durst you usurp the glory of the crime,
And dare ye not? I know, you scorn to be
By such as they outdone in villany,
Your proper province; true, you urged them on,
Were engines in the fact, but they alone
Shared all the open credit and renown.
But hold! I wrong our church and cause, which need
No foreign instance, nor what others did.
Think on that matchless assassin, whose name
We with just pride can make our happy claim;
He, who at killing of an emperor,
To. give his poison stronger force and power
Mixed a god with't, and made it work more sure:
Blessed memory! which shall through age to come
Stand sacred in the lists of hell and Rome.
Let our great Clement[1] and Ravaillac's[2] name,
Your spirits to like heights of sin inflame;
- ↑ Jacques Clement, a Dominican monk, who assassinated Henry III. at St. Cloud, in 1589, in the same chamber, it is said, where Henry, as Duke of Anjou, assented to the massacre of the Huguenots. Having obtained admission under the pretext of business of importance, Clement, whose fanaticism was stimulated by the Duchess de Montpensier, put a letter in the King's hand, and stabbed him while he was reading it. The regicide was killed on the spot by the attendants. Clement was almost deified for this deed. His portrait was placed on the altars of Paris beside the Eucharist; a statue was erected to him in Notre Dame; the Sorbonne demanded his canonization; and Pope Sextus V. pronounced a panegyric upon his memory.
- ↑ François Ravaillac, executed in 1610 for the murder of Henry IV.
