You sent young Luigne to entice the beast,
And he went without a moment’s hesitation.
He swam into the river’s fluctuation.
All who watched thought you sent him to be a feast.
The hungry serpent swam and roared and reached
The swimming boy with hungry salutation.
All those who looked on watched in fear and frustration,
As you, Columba, looked on in holy peace.
For you knew how to read the book of creation,
What songs or signs would send the creature running.
By the grace of God and by the Holy Rood,
You sent the creature to its new habitation.
Pictish heathens stood, their minds all wondering,
“Who is this Christ we may have misunderstood?”

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We hope you will join us in The Imaginative Conservative community. The Imaginative Conservative is an online journal for those who seek the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. We address culture, liberal learning, politics, political economy, literature, the arts and the American Republic in the tradition of Russell Kirk, T.S. Eliot, Edmund Burke, Irving Babbitt, Wilhelm Roepke, Robert Nisbet, Richard Weaver, M.E. Bradford, Eric Voegelin, Christopher Dawson, Paul Elmer More, and other leaders of Imaginative Conservatism. Some conservatives may look at the state of Western culture and the American Republic and see a huge dark cloud which seems ready to unleash a storm that may well wash away what we most treasure of our inherited ways. Others focus on the silver lining which may be found in the next generation of traditional conservatives who have been inspired by Dr. Kirk and his like. We hope that The Imaginative Conservative answers T.S. Eliot’s call to “redeem the time, redeem the dream.” The Imaginative Conservative offers to our families, our communities, and the Republic, a conservatism of hope, grace, charity, gratitude, and prayer.

The featured image is “Saint Columba Converting King Brude of the Picts to Christianity” (c. 1899) by William Hole (1846–1917) and is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license. It has been brightened for clarity and appears here courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

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