'Thou art Pole, and thou art our Polar star, to light us to the kingdom of the heavens. Sky, rivers, earth, these disfigured walls—all things—long for thee. While thou wert absent from us all things were sad, all things were in the power of the adversary. At thy coming all things are smiling, all glad, all tranquil.'[1] The legate listened so far, and then checked the flood of the adoring eloquence. 'I heard you with pleasure,' he said, 'while you were praising God. My own praises I do not desire to hear. Give the glory to Him.'
From Canterbury, Richard Pate, who, as titular Bishop of Worcester, had sat at the Council of Trent, was sent forward to the Queen with an answer to her letter, and a request for further directions. The legate himself went on leisurely to Rochester, where he was entertained by Lord Cobham, at Cowling Castle. So far he had observed the instructions brought to him by Paget, and had travelled as an ordinary ecclesiastic, without distinctive splendour. On the night of the 23rd, however, Pate returned from the Court with a message that the legatine insignia might be displayed. A fleet of barges was in waiting at Gravesend, where Pole appeared early on the 24th; and, as a Saturday,
Nov. 24.further augury of good fortune, he found
- ↑ 'Tu es Polus, qui aperis nobis Polum regni cælorum. Aer, flumina, terra, parietes ipsi, omnia denique te desiderant. Quamdiu abfuisti omnia fuerunt tristia et adversa. In adventu tuo, omnia rident, omnia læta, omnia tranquilla.' I have endeavoured to preserve the play on the word Polus, altering the meaning as little as the necessities of translation would allow. It has been suggested to me that the word 'parietes' implies properly internal walls, and the allusion was to the defacement of the cathedral.
