And supreme the spectral creature lorded Above which intervened the night. But above night too, like only the next, Reaching in rare and rarer frequence, Till the heaven of heavens were circumflexed, Fainter, flushier and flightier, Rapture dying along its verge. Oh, whose foot shall I see emerge, Whose, from the straining topmost dark, On to the keystone of that arc? He did see One emerging from the glory VIII. All at once I looked up with terror. He himself with his human air, No face only the sight Of a sweepy garment, vast and white, I felt terror, no surprise ; My mind filled with the cataract, Doubtless, that, to this world's end, Of the golden thought without alloy, That I saw his very vesture's hem. Then rushed the blood black, cold and clear, With a fresh enhancing shiver of fear; And I hastened, cried out while I pressed "But not so, Lord! It cannot be "That thou, indeed, art leaving me "Me, that have despised thy friends!" The confession of his sin in despising His friends in the little chapel is speedily followed by a gracious token of forgiveness : As when the bleacher spreads, to seethe it Steeps in the flood of noontide whiteness So lay I, saturate with brightness. His sin thus purged (how exquisitely wrought out the lovely simile of the sun-cleansed wool!), he is caught up in the whirl and drift of the vesture's amplitude," and thus clinging to the garment's hem, is carried across land and sea-to a scene so complete a contrast to the one he has just left that he is confused, and some time elapses before he discovers that he is in front of St. Peter's at Rome: X. And so we crossed the world and stopped. Since I am 'ware of the world again? And what is this that rises propped This miraculous Dome of God? Which numbered cubits, gem from gem, Columns in the colonnade With arms wide open to embrace The entry of the human race To the breast of . . . what is it, yon building, Ablaze in front, all paint and gilding, With marble for brick, and stones of price For garniture of the edifice? Now I see; it is no dream; It stands there and it does not seem : For ever, in pictures, thus it looks, And thus I have read of it in books Often in England, leagues away, And wondered how these fountains play, Each to a musical water-tree, Whose blossoms drop, a glittering boon, Before my eyes, in the light of the moon, To the granite lavers underneath. There follows a description of the worship in the great cathedral-not now, as before, unsympathetic and merely critical, but giving evidence of the liveliest appreciation of the feelings of the intelligent and devout ritualist, as in the following passage : Earth breaks up, time drops away, In flows heaven, with its new day Of endless life, when he who trod, This earth in weakness, shame and pain, But the one God, All in all, King of kings, Lord of lords, As his servant John received the words, "I died, and live for evermore ! " Still he cannot enter into it. He is left outside the door. Distracted with conflicting emotions, his reason repelled by the superstition, his spirit attracted by the lofty devotion which he discovers at the heart of the too gorgeous ritual-he cannot make up his mind whether he should join them for the one reason, or shun them for the other Though Rome's gross yoke Drops off, no more to be endured, By errors and perversities, That no truth shines athwart the lies: And he, whose eye detects a spark * Even where, to man's, the whole seems dark, May well see flame where each beholder Acknowledges the embers smoulder. But I, a mere man, fear to quit The clue God gave me as most fit To guide my footsteps through life's maze, Open to reach him : I, a man To swerve aside, till from its summit -'T was thus my reason straight replied The garment's skirt upon my breast, Until, afresh its light suffusing me, My heart cried "What has been abusing me That I should wait here lonely and coldly, Instead of rising, entering boldly, Baring truth's face, and letting drift Her veils of lies as they choose to shift? My voice up to their point of praise! The scope of error, see the love.— Oh, love of those first Christian days! -Fanned so soon into a blaze, |