‘Looking across One Thousand Years’

 

Up from northern Ireland

To the holy island

Of Iona, seeking

An holy habitation,

You, Feredarius,

Were chosen the chief shepherd

Of the monastery

There in the Year of Our Lord

Eight hundred and sixty-three,

A baleful time when Viking

Northmen had turned Western lands

Into a reeking inferno

Of plundering, torture,

And death.  Could you see then,

Through the eye of your soul,

A thousand years thence,

When the descendants

Of those same Norsemen,

By blood and by spirit,

Would wantonly invade

The Arcadian South

To repeat their acts

Of pillage, murder,

And sacrilege?

 

                                    Forced to flee

The sacred isle, like Aeneas

You took with you holy things

To save them from unholy hands,

Carrying reverently

Upon your back the bones

Of your Holy Father

In the Faith, Columba.

 

The destructive raids

Of Yankee Northmen

Upon belovèd Dixie

Continue unabated,

But we have no shepherd

To guard our lives and

Precious patrimony.

Stand as bulwark

Between them and us,

Father Feredarius,

Together with

The Ever-Memorable

Columba, and pray

For us, that the Lord

Would deliver us

At last from their scourges.

--

Holy Ælfred the Great, King of England, South Patron, pray for us sinners at the Souð, unworthy though we are!

Anathema to the Union!