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Thus spake the pilgrims o'er this mighty wall
In Saxon times, which we are wont to call
Ancient; and these three mortal things are still
On their foundations, and unaltered all,

Rome and her Ruin past Redemption's skill,

The World, the same wide den-of thieves, or what ye will CXLVI.

Simple, erect, severe, austere, sublime

Shrine of all saints and temple of all gods,

From Jove to Jesus-spared and blest by time; 60
Looking tranquillity, while falls or nods

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

Of art and piety-Pantheon !-pride of Rome !

CXLVII.

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 honoured forms, whose busts around them close. 61

CXLVIII.

There is a dungeon, in whose dim drear light 62
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?

CXLIX.

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-CAIN was EVE'S

CL.

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

Than Egypt's river:-from that gentle side

Drink, drink and live, old man! Heaven's realm holds no such tide CLI.

The starry fable of the milky way

Has not thy story's purity; it is

A constellation of a sweeter ray,

And sacred Nature triumphs more in this

Reverse of her decree, than in the abyss

Where sparkle distant worlds:-Oh, holiest nurse!
No drop of that clear stream its way shall miss
To thy sire's heart, replenishing its source
With life, as our freed souls; rejoin the universe.

CLII.

Turn to the Mole which Hadrian rear'd on high,63

Imperial mimic of old Egypt's piles,

Colossal copyist of deformity,

Whose travelled phantasy from the far Nile's

Enormous model, doom'd the artists toils

To build for giants, and for his vain earth

His shrunken ashes raise this dome: How smiles

The gazer's eye with philosophic mirth,

To view the huge design which sprung from such a birth!

CLIII.

But lo! the dome-the vast and wondrous dome 64

To which Diana's marvel was a cell

Christ's mighty shrine above his martyr's tomb !

I have beheld the Ephesian's miracle

Its columns strew the wilderness; and dwell
The hyæna and the jackall in their shade;

I have behield Sophia's bright roofs swell

Their glittering mass i' the sun, and have survey'd Its sanctuary the while, the usurping Moslem pray'd; CLIV.

But thou, of temples old, or altars new,
Standest alone-with nothing like to thee-
Worthiest of God, the holy and the true.
Since Zion's desolation, when that He
Forsook his former city, what could be,

Of earthly structures, in his honour piled,

Of a sublimer aspect! Majesty,

Power, Glory, Strength, and Beauty, all are aisled

In this eternal ark of worship undefiled.

CL V.

Enter its grandeur overwhelms thee not;

:

And why? it is not lessened; but thy mind,
Expanded by the genius of the spot,
Has grown colossal, and can only find
A fit abode wherein appear enshrined
Thy hopes of immortality; and thou
Shalt one day, if found worthy, so defined,
See thy God face to face, as thou dost now
His Holy of Holies, nor be blasted by his brow.

5.

CLVI.

Thou novest-but increasing with the advance,
Like climbing some great Alp, which still doth rise,
Deceived by its gigantic elegance;

Vastness which grows-but grows to harmonize-
All musical in its immensities;

Rich marbles—richer painting-shrines where flame
The lamps of gold-and haughty dome which vies
In air with Earth's chief structures, though their frame
Sits on the firm-set ground-and this the clouds must claim.
CLVII.

Thou seest not all; but piecemeal thou must break

To separate contemplation, the great whole;

And as the ocean many bays will make,
That ask the eye-so here condense thy soul

To more immediate objects, and control

Thy thoughts until thy mind hath got by heart

Its eloquent proportions, and unroll

In mighty graduations, part by part,

The glory which at once upon thee did not dart,

CLVIII.

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

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