Superstition: A Tale Poem by Samuel Bowden

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Tuven


As zealous pilgrims, far and near,
Inspir'd by superstitious fear,
Flock to Loretto's sacred shrine,
To beg some grace, or gift divine;
Or as to Mecca's holy air
Enthusiastic Turks repair;
So crowds, eke full of monkish zeal,
Repair to Glaston's healing well:
There to be conjur'd from their ails,
When Galen's art no more prevails;
And into health to be enchanted,
Tho' with Pandora's curses haunted.
This sacred stream will soon supply
A salve for every malady:
The groping blind receive their sight;
The staggering cripple walks upright;
Asthmatic lungs expand again,
And gouty patients lose their pain.
Drink, and believe; believe, and drink;
Marasmus fills, and Dropsies sink.


But how this spring got reputation,
Attend this genuine relation.


A Farmer, who had try'd much physic,
In vain, to cure his lab'ring Pthisic,
Divinely dreamt the other night,
As he lay snoring in bad plight,
This water wou'd asthmatic fetters
Release, if drank for seven red letters:
So in observance of his dream,
Seven Sunday morns he drank the stream;
'Till on the seventh auspicious day
His panting lungs begun to play,
And every ailment fled away:
While busy fame, from door to door
Soon propagates the wond'rous cure.


Say, what strange power resides in seven,
To charm us into health and Heaven?
At seven times seven trumpet's sound,
Proud walls fell prostrate to the ground.
The seventh son is doctor sworn,
By inheritance, as soon as born;
And without learning, moods, and tenses,
A conjurer at his birth commences.
Seven planets too adorn the sky,
To govern our nativity;
The fatal climacteric line;
Is sixty-three, or seven-times nine.
Then wonder not that power is given,
To work such miracles by seven.


This water free for rich, or poor,
Works eleemosynary cure.
Too long have venal fountains flow'd
From Bath, from Bristol, Holt and Road.


Besides, the place is sacred ground,
Where saints lie bury'd all around.
This wondrous, salutary rill
Flows from the Torr's religious hill;
And filtres thro' the holy clay,
Where ghostly monks, and martyrs lay:
Whose reverend relicks still supply
The stream with healing energy.
Here Arimathean Joseph's bones
Hallow the consecrated stones,
And Glastonbury thorn-like May,
Still blossoms every Christmas day.


Be silent now, romantic Wales!
With all thy legendary tales:
No more of Merlin's visions tell,
Or Winifred's enchanted well:
This panacean fount surpases
The brook of Siloa, or Parnassus.


Cou'd Abbot Whiting from the sky,
Or Torr where once he hung so high,
Look down on this deluded rabble,
And hear their superstitious babble,
How wou'd he bless his aged eyes,
To see so rich a sacrifice;
To see old relics idoliz'd,
And ghostly wonders canoniz'd.
To see restor'd Rome's darling daughter,
Infallibility-in water:
Still may thy manes rest in peace,
Tho' prayers of Ora nobis cease.


Now cease reviling Rome to cry
At hugonot infidelity:
No more let protestants expose
The holy-water, or the rose;
No more the sainted beads explode,
The crucifix, or wafer-god,
Since the same spirit still prevails,
We only here have turn'd the scales.


Blest Becket from thy tomb arise,
And view thy saints with ravish'd eyes:
As crowds did at thy altar bow,
So this is Canterbury now.


Water that has intrinsic merit,
Needs no support from dream, or spirit.
True virtue in this fountain lies,
Without imputed sanctities;
Founded on solid fact, and cure,
This only will its same secure;
Fixt on this basis, 'twill not mock us,
But all the rest is Hocus Pocus.