In mighty graduations, part by part,
The glory which at once upon thee did not dart,
Not by its fault, but thine. Our outward sense Is but of gradual grasp, and as it is
That what we have of feeling most intense Outstrips our faint expression, even so this Outshining and o'erwhelming edifice
Fools our fond gaze, and, greatest of the great, Defies at first our nature's littleness,
Till, growing with its growth, we thus dilate Our spirits to the size of that they contemplate. Lord Byron.
SIR WALTER SCOTT AT THE TOMB OF THE STUARTS.
VE'S tinted shadows slowly fill the fane
Where Art has taken almost Nature's room, While still two objects clear in light remain, An alien pilgrim at an alien tomb,-
A sculptured tomb of regal heads discrowned, Of one heart-worshipped, fancy-haunted name, Once loud on earth, but now scarce else renowned Than as the offspring of that stranger's fame.
There lie the Stuarts! There lingers Walter Scott! Strange congress of illustrious thoughts and things! A plain old moral, still too oft forgot, The power of genius and the fall of kings. The curse on lawless will high-planted there, A beacon to the world, shines not for him;
He is with those who felt their life was sere, When the full light of loyalty grew dim.
He rests his chin upon a sturdy staff, Historic as that sceptre, theirs no more; His gaze is fixed; his thirsty heart can quaff, For a short hour the spirit-draughts of yore.
Each figure in its pictured place is seen, Each fancied shape his actual vision fills, From the long-pining, death-delivered queen To the worn outlaw of the heathery hills.
O grace of life, which shame could never mar! O dignity, that circumstance defied!
Pure is the neck that wears the deathly scar, And sorrow has baptized the front of pride.
But purpled mantle and blood-crimsoned shroud, Exiles to suffer and returns to woo,
Are gone, like dreams by daylight disallowed; And their historian, he is sinking too!
A few more moments, and that laboring brow Cold as those royal busts and calm will lie; And, as on them his thoughts are resting now, His marbled form will meet the attentive eye.
Thus, face to face, the dying and the dead, Bound in one solemn, ever-living bond, Communed; and I was sad that ancient head Ever should pass those holy walls beyond.
THE ILLUMINATIONS OF ST. PETER'S.
EMPLE! where Time has wed Eternity, How beautiful thou art beyond compare, Now emptied of thy massive majesty, And made so faery-frail, so faery-fair; The lineaments that thou art wont to wear Augustly traced in ponderous masonry, Lie faint as in a woof of filmy air, Within their frames of mellow jewelry.
But yet how sweet the hardly waking sense,
That when the strength of hours has quenched those
Disparted all those soft-bright diadems,
Still in the sun thy form will rise supreme
In its own solid, clear magnificence,
Divinest substance then, as now divinest dream.
My heart was resting with a peaceful gaze, So peaceful that it seemed I well could die Entranced before such beauty, when a cry Burst from me, and I sunk in dumb amaze : The molten stars before a withering blaze
Paled to annihilation, and my eye,
Stunned by the splendor, saw against the sky
Nothing but light, — sheer light,
At last that giddying sight took form, and then Appeared the stable vision of a crown,
From the black vault by unseen power let down, Cross-topped, thrice girt with flaine:
Queens of the earth! bow low,
Of mortal birth adorned as Rome is now?
ST. PETER'S BY MOONLIGHT.
OW hung the moon when first I stood in Rome;
L Midway she seemed attracted from her sphere,
On those twin fountains shining broad and clear Whose floods, not mindless of their mountain home, Rise there in clouds of rainbow mist and foam. That hour fulfilled the dream of many a year: Through that thin mist, with joy akin to fear, The steps I saw, the pillars, last, the dome. A spiritual empire there embodied stood; The Roman Church there met me face to face: Ages, sealed up, of evil and of good
Slept in that circling colonnade's embrace. Alone I stood, a stranger and alone, Changed by that stony miracle to stone.
NOBLE structure truly! as you say,
Clear, spacious, large in feeling and design, Just what a church should be,
I grant alway There may be faults, great faults, yet I opine Less on the whole than elsewhere may be found But let its faults go, out of human thought Was nothing ever builded, written, wrought That one can say is whole, complete, and round; Your snarling critic gloats upon defects, And any fool among the architects
Can pick you out a hundred different flaws; But who of them, with all his talking, draws A church to match it? View it as a whole, Not part by part, with those mean little eyes, That cannot love, but only criticise, How grand a body! with how large a soul!
Seen from without, how well it bodies forth
Rome's proud religion, — nothing mean and small In its proportion, and above it all
A central dome of thought, a forehead bare That rises in this soft Italian air
Big with its intellect, and far away,
When lesser domes have sunken in the earth, Stands for all Rome uplifted in the day, An art-born brother of the mountains there. See what an invitation it extends
To the world's pilgrims, be they foes or friends.
« EelmineJätka » |