February 21, 2017
Robert Southwell, poet

On this date, February 21, 1595, poet Robert Southwell was hanged and quartered for treason.

“The death of Robert Southwell on this day, February 21, 1595 dramatizes the fact that neither high birth, sincerity, poetic gifts, nor a sweet disposition can protect one from persecution. Chances are, if you have seen Southwell’s name at all, it has been attached to the poem “The Burning Babe” in an English literature anthology. The Christmas Babe is none other than Christ, who says:

As I in hoary winter’s night stood shivering in the snow, Surpris’d I was with sudden heat which made my heart to glow;
And lifting up a fearful eye to view what fire was near, A pretty Babe all burning bright did in the air appear;

Who, scorched with excessive heat, such floods of tears did shed, As though his floods should quench his flames which with his tears were fed.
“Alas!” quoth he, “but newly born, in fiery heats I fry, Yet none approach to warm their hearts or feel my fire but I!
My faultless breast the furnace is, the fuel wounding thorns, Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke, the ashes shame and scorns;
The fuel Justice layeth on, and Mercy blows the coals, The metal in this furnace wrought are men’s defiled souls,
For which, as now on fire I am to work them to their good, So will I melt into a bath to wash them in my blood.”
With this he vanish’d out of sight and swiftly shrunk away, And straight I called unto mind that it was Christmas day.

Shakespeare read Southwell’s poems and Ben Jonson said he would gladly destroy many of his own if he might thereby have written Southwell’s best. The creator of “The Burning Babe” was born in England around 1561 to an old Catholic family. His grandfather had been a prominent man in Henry VIII’s court and the family remained among the elite of the land. So beautiful was Southwell as a boy that a gypsy stole him. He was soon recovered by his family and grew into a short, handsome man, with gray eyes and red hair. Even as a child, Southwell distinguished himself by his strong attraction to the old religion. As he grew older, his love for Catholicism remained. Under English Protestantism it was a crime for any Englishman ordained as a Catholic priest to remain in England more than forty days at a time. Southwell flouted this law. In order to keep English Catholicism alive, William Allen opened a school at Douai, where he made a Catholic translation of the Bible, the well-known Douai version. Southwell attended this school and asked to be admitted into the Jesuit order. At first the Jesuits rejected his application, but eventually his earnest appeals moved them to accept him. He was ordained a priest in 1584. Two years later, at his own request, he went as a missionary to England, well knowing the dangers he faced. Spies reported Southwell’s arrival in England. Although he lived mostly in London, he traveled in disguise and preached secretly throughout England. His downfall and capture came about when Anne Bellamy, a Catholic girl, betrayed him to Richard Topcliffe, a notorious agent of the anti-Catholic persecution.” (Conscientious Poet Robert Southwell, Dan Graves, Christianity.com)

I read that poem by Southwell and I cannot help but feel the passion he had for the Christian faith. I wish I could write prose like that. Just let it sink in……

Pastor Dave