~by Avellina Balestri

“Most truly do you say, that the land has been deprived of an incomparable treasure. Indeed, I consider that by the death of one youth, the whole nation has been bereaved of the best of fathers.” – John Calvin on King Edward VI

~

Outside a London hospital,

There stands a stone statue

Of a boy king,

Bearing a scepter of authority

And a scroll of re-establishment.

In another sculpted likeness,

He points to an open book

Which tells Josiah’s tale,

Israel’s child with an iron rod,

Announcing the Lord’s Coming

Like an archangel, sword drawn

Before the walls of Jericho,

Causing the ground to tremor.

This British Josiah

Is a Protestant hero,

Yet this Catholic poet

Cannot scorn him.

There is too much of the saint in him,

Passing beyond the political.

He is England’s grave youth

Who England has forgotten

In her embrace of latter-day idols,

Cherubic face and ageless eyes

Haunting a brief reign

With Heaven’s fire

Before the settlement subdued

A wilder isle.

He is written off as too weak

Or too willful,

Tearing and topping 

All he believed to be a barrier

Betwixt God and Man

Before he himself was torn and toppled,

Sweating upon his sickbed

And praying for death

To end his disease.

“Live to die

And die to live,”

He penned in a devotional,

One of many he pored over,

Seeking copies of every sermon,

Hungry for God at every meal,

Breaking bread with divines

And discussing holy writ.

What does it mean, he asked,

To be the Lord’s anointed?

Nothing more or less

Than hours spent, knees to floor,

Hands clasped and eyes upraised,

Repeating with white lips,

“Lord, save Thy people!”

 And every night, beside his bed,

He would kneel and repent of his sins,

According to the promises

Declared unto mankind

In Christ Jesus. 

Thus he earned his kingship

Till his kneecaps ached.

He strove to walk in righteousness,

Not turning aside to the right or left,

And though we might question his acts,

We cannot question his integrity.

“Something is wanting,”

He said at his coronation,

Gazing at the swords of state.

“Where is the sword of the spirit?”

A Bible was brought to him,

And he said that he preferred its might

To all his temporal powers,

For the latter were only lent to him

By God, for the people’s protection.

He proclaimed to his entourage,

“Without the last sword, we are nothing, 

We can do nothing, 

We have no power!

From that, we are what we are this day. 

From that, we receive whatsoever we assume. 

Under that, we ought to live, 

To fight, to govern the people, 

And to perform all our affairs.”

Fervent and flawed,

With grace of posture

And gesture in gravity,

Erudition united with piety

In his persona,

He would never settle,

But pushed himself onward,

Like every day was a thousand years,

And a thousand years but a day,

Until he coughed up blood

And broke out in blisters,

And cried out,

“O Lord, 

Thou knowest how happy it were 

For me to be with Thee!” 

It was prophesied he would be a terror 

To the sovereigns of the earth,

But the boy who slew his mother at birth

Was himself slain, by himself,

A fast-burning taper,

Wax melting

As he had melted hearts

With the impression of his presence.

Though he had spurned the old saints

From the Catholic communion,

Decrying them as a pagan pantheon,

He was called “a true saint”

For his love of God,

And shared more in common with them

Than perhaps he could accept,

A continuity in spite of constraints

With the likes of Edmund, 

Called the Martyr,

England’s first patron,

A pious royal youth.

The British Josiah still haunts us,

His pale face preserved in paint,

A beautiful specimen of mortality,

In all its brokenness,

A father of his nation

 At nine years of age,

And under the earth 

At a decade and a half.

As his breathing failed,

His attendants asked him

What he was saying to himself

In his feverish state.

He smiled and whispered,

“I was praying to God.”

Then,

“I feel faint,”

Then,

“Lord, 

Have mercy upon me…

Take my spirit…”

And so he submitted himself,

Quoting his Savior,

“Not my will, but Thine be done,”

And sweetly succumbed

Without a struggle.  

I like to think 

He remembers his realm

In her age of unbelief

And hovers over the hospitals

And schools and poor houses

That he patronized,

A legacy beyond the destruction

Of ancient altars.

I can almost see him,

His youthful eyes alive

With his unique mixture

Of ferocity and gentility,

A shining light 

Of precocious study

And a royal measure

Of divine strength.

I can almost hear him,

Commanding his countrymen,

With a boy’s voice, full kingly,

To seize again that lost sword

That cleaves spirits,

And in his imitation,

Die at peace with their God.