Ted Hughes — The Martyrdom of Bishop Farrar

Bloody Mary’s venomous flames can curl; They can shrivel sinew and char bone Of foot, ankle, knee and thigh, and boil Bowels, and drop his heart a cinder down; And her soldiers can cry, as they hurl Logs in the red rush: “This is her sermon.” The sullen-jowled watching Welsh townspeople Hear him crack in the fire’s mouth: they see what Black oozing twist of stuff bubbles the smell That tars and retches their lungs: no pulpit Of his ever held their eyes so still, Never, as now his agony, his wit. An ignorant means to establish ownership Of his flock! Thus their shepherd she seized And knotted him into this blazing shape In their eyes, as if such could have cauterized The trust they turned towards him, and branded on Its stump her claim, to outlaw question. So it might have been: seeing their exemplar And teacher burned for his lessons to black bits, Their silence might have disowned him to her, And hung up what he had taught with their Welsh hats: Who sees his blasphemous father struck by fire From heaven, might well be heard to speak no oaths. But the fire that struck here, come from Hell even, Kindled little heavens in his words As he fed his body to the flame alive. Words which, before they will be dumbly spared, Will burn their body and be tongued with fire Make paltry folly of flesh and this world’s air. When they saw what annuities of hours And comfortable blood he burned to get His words a bare honouring in their ears, The shrewd townsfolk pocketed them hot: Stamp was not current but they rang and shone As good gold as any queen’s crown. Gave all he had, and yet the bargain struck To a merest farthing his whole agony, His body’s cold-kept miserdom on shrieks He gave uncounted, while out of his eyes, Out of his mouth, fire like a glory broke, And smoke burned his sermon into the skies.