POPE LEO’S PRAYER TO CHRIST

Greymouth Evening Star, Volume XXXI, 4 May 1901, Page 4

POPE LEO’S PRAYER TO CHRIST

Now ends this ago, kind nurse of noble arts; Its useful gifts, and nature’s powers unveiled, Let those who will acclaim with grateful hearts.

The failures of this failing century Concern me more; these I bemoaned Alas ! What wrongs my backward gaze recalls to me !

Of slaughters, broken sceptres, vice widespread, Shall I complain? Or of the Vatican Beset with thousand wiles of battle dread ?

Queen City, that has never owned defeat, Why fades thy fame ? Long centuries honoured the; Ancestral tribes boat at thy pontiff's seat.

Woe when man’s law the law of God defies ? What faith can stay, once from God’s altar rent ? Then justice faints and falls and honour dies.

Hear ye the impious rant the rabble speak, Vain of their crasy lore? Their only God In nature blind and dumb and dead they seek.

They scorn to see, wrought in the human frame, Image of God; but chasing empty dreams, They make the seed of man and beast the same.

Alas ! how wallows in a gulf of shame Man's shameful pride! Mortals attend and bend, In service bond before God’s holy name !

Ho ia the Life, the Truth, the only Way To heaven above. He only can restore. The vanished years to mortals gone astray.

’Tis He that lately led the pious thongs Of pilgrims seeking Peter’s holy dust— No empty omen for our prayers and songs.

Jesus, Thou ruler of all times that bo, Bless Thou the century's successive years, Bid Thou the recreant nations turn to Thee!

Nourish, I pray, the seeds of kindly peace, To realms of darkness drive the crimes of men, That passions, tumults, cruel wars may cease.

Let kings with eager hearts Thy laws obey ; One thospfold and one shepherd lot there be, And let one faith rule all the earth for aye.

My course is run. Now four-score years and ten Thou givest me of life; give me its crown. Let not Thy Leo’s prayer be prayed in vain.

—Translated for the Independent by William Hayes Ward.