And grew unto a great estate,

And waxed strong in grace and power,
With Christ for head and faithful mate,
And learning for her dower.

Since first this house to him was raised,
Three times five hundred years have run;
For this let Constantine be praised,
An English mother's son!

He with his own imperial sword
Did dig foundations broad and deep,
That henceforth in his hand the Lord
Rome and her hills should keep.

In after ages, one by one,

Arose the altars vowed to Heaven; Each crest is sacred now, but none

Like this of all the Seven!

Behold she stands! The Mother Church!
A queen among her countless peers!

Ab! open be that sacred porch

For thrice five hundred years!

Bessie Rayner Parkes.

THE LATERAN CLOISTERS.

THE very roses, thick with bloom,

Are golden in the golden light; What sanctifies that belt of gloom? What makes this court so bright ?

Are other pillars half so rich,

So dainty delicate as these,

Which curl and twist like woodland niche

Set in a frame of trees!

Two legendary stones are here,

And cast a mystery round the spot; Let none to whom his Lord is dear Say he believes them not!

Behold the well where Jesus stayed,

(The heart which questioned also nigh!) And, "wearied with his journey," bade To fountains never dry.

Until for her who stood beside
His words alone sufficed,

And as she went her way, she cried,
"But is not this the Christ!"

See measured on that pillar's round
The stature of his sacred head;
Let that be counted holy ground
Of which such things are said.

And do not weigh what men believe,
When thus from age to age is told
A tale which eager hearts receive
With love that grows not cold.

A garden blessed by many prayers,
And centuries of sacred fame,

A pilgrim's tender footstep spares,
If only for the claim!

So pluck the golden Lateran rose

Which blooms about each ancient stone;
And faith which towards a legend flows

Shall not be left alone!

Bessie Rayner Parkes.

THE PANTHEON.

NIMPLE, erect, severe, austere, sublime,

SIMPI

Shrine of all saints, and temple of all gods, From Jove to Jesus, - spared and blest by time; Looking tranquillity, while falls or nods

-

Arch, empire, each thing round thee, and man plods His way through thorns to ashes, glorious dome! Shalt thou not last? Time's scythe and tyrants' rods sanctuary and home

Shiver upon thee,

Of art and piety, — Pantheon! — pride of Rome!

Relic of nobler days and noblest arts!
Despoiled yet perfect, with thy circle spreads
A holiness appealing to all hearts,

To art a model; and to him who treads
Rome for the sake of ages, Glory sheds
Her light through thy sole aperture; to those
Who worship, here are altars for their beads;
And they who feel for genius may repose

Their eyes on honored forms, whose busts around them

close.

Lord Byron.

THE PANTHEON.

NO, great Dome of Agrippa, thou art not Christian!

canst not,

Strip and replaster and daub and do what they will with thee, be so!

Here underneath the great porch of colossal Corinthian

columns,

Here as I walk, do I dream of the Christian belfries above them?

Or on a bench as I sit and abide for long hours, till thy whole vast

Round grows dim as in dreams to my eyes, I repeople thy niches,

Not with the martyrs and saints and confessors and virgins and children,

But with the mightier forms of an older, austerer wor

ship;

And I recite to myself, how

Eager for battle here Stood Vulcan, here matronal Juno,

And with the bow to his shoulder faithful
He who with pure dew laveth of Castaly
His flowing locks, who holdeth of Lycia
The oak forest and the wood that bore him,
Delos' and Patara's own Apollo.

Arthur Hugh Clough.

SAN NICOLO IN CARCERE.

HERE is a dungeon, in whose dim, drear light

THERE

-

What do I gaze on? Nothing; look again! Two forms are slowly shadowed on my sight, Two insulated phantoms of the brain:

It is not so; I see them full and plain,
An old man, and a female young and fair,
Fresh as a nursing mother, in whose vein

The blood is nectar; - but what doth she there, With her unmantled neck, and bosom white and bare?

Full swells the deep pure fountain of young life, Where on the heart and from the heart we took Our first and sweetest nurture, when the wife, Blest into mother, in the innocent look, Or even the piping cry of lips that brook No pain and small suspense, a joy perceives Man knows not, when from out its cradled nook She sees her little bud put forth its leaves What may the fruit be yet?-I know not

Eve's.

Cain was

But here youth offers to old age the food,
The milk of his own gift: it is her sire
To whom she renders back the debt of blood
Born with her birth. No; he shall not expire
While in those warm and lovely veins the fire
Of health and holy feeling can provide

Great Nature's Nile, whose deep stream rises higher