Southwell on the beauty of faith

I keep running into Jesuits, not literally, in my readings. Came across another, Robert Southwell (c. 1561 – 21 February 1595), an English Jesuit that according to Joseph Pearce (Literary Giants, Literary Catholics), "employed the beauty of language as a means of conveying the beauty of faith (p 18)."

Southwell was martyred in post-Reformation England. Queen Elizabeth I issued an edict that any English-born subject that entered the priesthood after her accession to the throne could not stay in England longer than 40 days on pain of death. Southwell at his own request was sent to England in 1586 as a Jesuit missionary. According to his bio, he went from one Catholic family to another, administering the rites of the Church. Arrested after six years of missionary work, he was held under house arrest and tortured in the hopes that he might reveal the identities of or provide evidence against other priests. He spent 3 years in the Tower of London, where he was only allowed his Bible and the works of St Bernard. While awaiting execution for treason, although he denied any evil intentions toward the queen, the torture continued. Eventually he was hanged, disemboweled, and quartered.


Much of his poetry, it is believed, was written from prison and is said to have influenced another Englishman, William Shakespeare.


Southwell's intimate relationship with his Lord, forged in the furnace of his suffering, shines forth in his verse:
Let folly praise that fancy loves, I praise and love that Child
Whose heart no thought, whose tongue no word, whose hand no deed defiled.
I praise him most, I love him best, all praise and love is his,
While him I love, in him I live, and cannot live amiss.
Love's sweetest mark, laud's highest theme, man's most desired light,
To love him life, to leave him death, to live in him delight.
He mine by gift, I his by debt, thus each to other due,
First friend he was, best friend he is, all times will try him true. 


All I can add is, Amen.