‘The Martyrs’ Bones’

 

Heathen tribes offered blood and bones of slaughtered men

To demonic hordes, seeking from them

Domination over other tribes

And nature’s powers, heaps and heaps

Of monstrous mounds with which to frighten

Or to goad.

 

                        Beneath Orthodox altars

And in other shrines besides, lie the bones

Of martyrs, their lives offered freely

As a sacrifice for love of Christ,

Immortal King and God.  Not bearing

The stomach-turning stench of death,

But the sweet fragrance of life, a proof

Of the presence of the Holy Ghost

Within them.  Being united with the source

Of Light and Resurrection, they bestow

Freedom on the those enslaved by the devil,

Release to those ensnared by the passions.

Carried in procession, they calm

The raging of the elements

And put an end to plagues;

Guardians of the city gates,

And of the homes of believing folk –

The unwed, and husbands, wives, and bairn-teams –

Protected by a spiritual power unseen.

 

They are the friends of all those who gather

Near with faith, and even if disposed

Of impiously, pour out blessings

Richly upon the world.

 

                                                Since the Fall,

Dead human bodies were a cause of dread.

But after the Advent of Christ

And the Descent of the Comforter,

The bodies of the martyr-saints

Are a source of consolation.

 

God has scattered them like seed among the nations,

That those who heed their testimony

Would bear a manifold harvest,

Tearing down strongholds of evil

While strengthening every good.

 

Only when our ears grow deaf to their pleas

And our hearts grow hard to their entreaties,

Will the world come to a mis’rable end,

Foreshadowed in the heathen hill of skulls –

An orgy of death sweeping o’er the earth.

--

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

Anathema to the Union!