THE CHURCH OF THE MADELEINE, AT PARIS.
THE Attic temple whose majestic room
Contained the presence of Olympian Jove,
With smooth Hymettus round it and above,
Softe'ning the splendour by a sober bloom,
Is yielding fast to Time's irreverent doom;
While on the then barbarian banks of Seine
That nobler type is realised again
In perfect form, and dedicate-to whom?
To a poor Syrian girl, of lowliest name,
A hapless creature, pitiful and frail
As ever wore her life in sin and shame,
Of whom all histo'ry has this single tale,—
"She loved the Christ, she wept beside his grave,
And He, for that Love's sake, all else forgave."
If one, with prescient soul to understand
The working of this world beyond the day
Of his small life, had taken by the hand
That wanton daughter of old Magdala ;
And told her that the time was ripe to come
When she, thus base among the base, should be
More served than all the Gods of Greece and Rome,
More honoured in her holy memory,-
How would not men have mocked and she have scorned
The fond Diviner ?-Plausible excuse
Had been for them, all moulded to one use
Of feeling and of thought, but We are warned
By such ensamples to distrust the sense
Of Custom proud and bold Experience.
Thanks to that element of heavenly things,
That did come down to earth, and there confound
Most sacred thoughts with names of usual sound,
And homeliest life with all a Poet sings.
The proud Ideas that had ruled and bound
Our moral nature were no longer kings,
Old Power grew faint and shed his eagle-wings,
And grey Philosophy was half uncrowned.
Love, Pleasure's child, betrothed himself to Pain ;-
Weakness, and Poverty, and Self-disdain,
And tranquil sufferance of repeated wrongs,
Became adorable;-Fame gave her tongues,
And Faith her hearts to objects all as low
As this lorn child of infamy and woe.
O FRANCE and England! on whose lofty crests
The day-spring of the Future flows so free,
Save where the cloud of your hostility
Settles between and holy light arrests,
Shall Ye, first instruments of God's behests,
But blunt each other? Shall Barbarians see
The two fair sisters of civility
Turn a fierce wrath against each other's breasts?
Answer to Wordsworth's Sonnet against the Kendal Railway. 227
No!-by our common hope and being-no!
By the expanding might and bliss of peace,
By the revealed insanity of war,
England and France shall not be foe to foe:
For how can earth her store of good increase,
If what God loves to make man's passions still will mar?
AT CHALFONT ST. GILES,
Where he remained during the Great Plague.
BENEATH this roof, for no such use designed
By its old owners, Fleetwood's banished race,
Blind Milton found a healthful resting-place,
Leaving the city's dark disease behind :--
Here, too, with studies noble and refined,
As with fresh air, his spirits he could brace,
And grow unconscious of the time's disgrace,
And the fierce plague of disappointed mind.
The gracious Muse is wont to build for most
Of her dear sons some pleasant noontide bower;
But for this One she raised a home of fame,
Where he dwelt safe through life's chill evening hour,
Above the memo'ry of his Hero lost,
His martyred brethren and his country's shame.
ANSWER TO WORDSWORTH'S SONNET AGAINST THE KENDAL AND BOWNESS RAILWAY.
THE hour may come, nay must in these our days,
When the swift steam-car with the cata'ract's shout
Shall mingle its harsh roll, and motley rout
Of multitudes these mountain echoes raise.
But Thou, the Patriarch of these beauteous ways,
Canst never grudge that gloomy streets send out
The crowded sons of labour, care, and doubt,
To read these scenes by light of thine own lays.
Disordered laughter and encounters rude
The Poet's finer sense perchance may pain,
But many a glade and nook of solitude
For quiet walk and thought will still remain,
Where He those poor intruders can elude,
Nor lose one dream for all their homely gain.
THE Men who called their passion piety,
And wrecked this noble argosy of faith,-
They little thought how beauteous could be Death,
How fair the face of Time's aye-deepe'ning sea!
Nor arms that desolate, nor years that flee,
Nor hearts that fail, can utterly deflower
This grassy floor of sacramental power,
Where we now stand commu'nicants-even We,
We of this latter, still protéstant age,
With priestly ministrations of the Sun
And Moon and multitudinous quire of stars
Maintain this consecration, and assuage
With tender thoughts the past of weary wars,
Masking with good that ill which cannot be undone.
ON THE GRAVE OF BISHOP KEN,
AT FROME, IN SOMERSETSHIRE.
LET other thoughts, where'er I roam,
Ne'er from my memory cancel
The coffin-fashioned tomb at Frome
That lies behind the chancel ;
A basket-work where bars are bent,
Iron in place of osier,
And shapes above that represent
A mitre and a crosier.
These signs of him that slumbers there
The dignity betoken;
These iron bars a heart declare
Hard bent but never broken;
This form pourtrays how souls like his,
Their pride and passion quelling,
Preferr'd to earth's high palaces
This calm and narrow dwelling.
There with the church-yard's common dust
He loved his own to mingle;
The faith in which he placed his trust
Was nothing rare or single;
Yet laid he to the sacred wall
As close as he was able,
The blessed crumbs might almost fall
Upon him from God's table.
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