So, as I enter here from day to day,

And leave my burden at this minster gate, Kneeling in prayer, and not ashamed to pray, The tumult of the time disconsolate

To inarticulate murmurs dies away,
While the eternal ages watch and wait.

II

How strange the sculptures that adorn these towers!

This crowd of statues, in whose folded sleeves

Birds build their nests; while canopied with leaves

Parvis and portal bloom like trellised bowers, And the vast minster seems a cross of flowers! But fiends and dragons on the gargoyled

eaves

Watch the dead Christ between the living thieves,

And, underneath, the traitor Judas lowers!

Ah! from what agonies of heart and brain,
What exultations trampling on despair,
What tenderness, what tears, what hate of
wrong,

What passionate outcry of a soul in pain,
Uprose this poem of the earth and air,
This mediæval miracle of song!

III

I enter, and I see thee in the gloom
Of the long aisles, O poet saturnine!

And strive to make my steps keep pace with thine.

The air is filled with some unknown perfume; The congregation of the dead make room

For thee to pass; the votive tapers shine; Like rooks that haunt Ravenna's groves of pine

The hovering echoes fly from tomb to tomb.

From the confessionals I hear arise
Rehearsals of forgotten tragedies,

And lamentations from the crypts below;
And then a voice celestial that begins
With the pathetic words, "Although your

sins

66

As scarlet be," and ends with as the snow."

IV

With snow-white veil and garments as of flame, She stands before thee, who so long ago Filled thy young heart with passion and

the woe

From which thy song and all its splendors

came;

And while with stern rebuke she speaks thy

name,

The ice about thy heart melts as the snow On mountain heights, and in swift overflow Comes gushing from thy lips in sobs of shame.

Thou makest full confession; and a gleam, As if the dawn on some dark forest cast, Seems on thy lifted forehead to increase; Lethe and Eunoë-the remembered dream And the forgotten sorrow-bring at last That perfect pardon which is perfect peace.

V

I lift mine eyes, and all the windows blaze
With forms of Saints and holy men who died,
Here martyred and hereafter glorified;
And the great Rose upon its leaves displays
Christ's Triumph, and the angelic roundelays,
With splendor upon splendor multiplied;
And Beatrice again at Dante's side

No more rebukes, but smiles her words of
praise.

And then the organ sounds, and unseen choirs Sing the old Latin hymns of peace and love And benedictions of the Holy Ghost;

And the melodious bells among the spires O'er all the house-tops and through heaven above

Proclaim the elevation of the Host!

VI

O star of morning and of liberty!

O bringer of the light, whose splendor shines Above the darkness of the Apennines, Forerunner of the day that is to be! The voices of the city and the sea,

The voices of the mountains and the pines, Repeat thy song, till the familiar lines Are footpaths for the thought of Italy!

Thy fame is blown abroad from all the heights,

Through all the nations, and a sound is heard,

As of a mighty wind, and men devout, Strangers of Rome, and the new proselytes, In their own language hear thy wondrous word,

And many are amazed and many doubt. 1867.

8

NATURE

As a fond mother, when the day is o'er,
Leads by the hand her little child to bed,
Half willing, half reluctant to be led,
And leave his broken playthings on the floor,

Still gazing at them through the open door, Nor wholly reassured and comforted

By promises of others in their stead, Which, though more splendid, may not please him more;

So Nature deals with us, and takes away
Our playthings one by one, and by the hand
Leads us to rest so gently, that we go
Scarce knowing if we wish to go or stay,
Being too full of sleep to understand
How far the unknown transcends the
what we know.

And her young artless words began to flow,
One day we gave the child a colour'd sphere
Of the wide earth, that she might mark and
know,

By tint and outline, all its sea and land.
She patted all the world; old empires peep'd
Between her baby fingers; her soft hand
Was welcome at all frontiers. How she
leap'd,

And laugh'd and prattled in her world-wide
bliss;