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A martyr’s poem on the Christ Child’s burning love

Illustration of Saint Robert Southwell, S.J. from the frontispice of "Saint Peter's complaint." (Public Domain via Wikimedia Commons)

St. Robert Southwell was about 25 years old and two years a priest when he and a Jesuit confrere landed secretly on English soil somewhere near Dover in 1586. It was the reign of Elizabeth I, and Catholicism, particularly the priestly ministry, was outlawed and energetically suppressed. Elizabeth’s spies went so far as to lurk in alleyways outside the Venerable English College in Rome — where Southwell had been formed for holy orders — attempting to sketch the faces of seminarians.

Most of Southwell’s significant literary output was generated between his secretive landing and his capture six years later, when he was deprived of writing materials. After three years of torture, St. Robert Southwell was tried and convicted for treason in 1595, then hung, drawn and quartered. But his writings, which form a sort of literary catechesis, circulated throughout England and influenced his contemporaries, including, scholars speculate, William Shakespeare.

The Burning Babe

By Robert Southwell, SJ

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.