And, as he asks what there the stranger seeks,
Thy voice along the cloister whispers “Peace!”

OFT

FT have I seen at some cathedral door

A laborer, pausing in the dust and heat,
Lay down his burden, and with reverent feet
Enter, and cross himself, and on the floor
Kneel to repeat his paternoster o'er;
Far off the noises of the world retreat;
The loud vociferations of the street
Become an undistinguishable roar.
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.1

HOW

OW 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, 4. 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,
L'prose this poem of the earth and air,
This mediæval miracle of song!

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

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 the wondrous word,
And many are amazed and many doubt.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

442

70

SHAKESPEARE

THERS abide our question. Thou art free.
We ask and ask-Thou smilest and art still,
Out-topping knowledge. For the loftiest hill,
Who to the stars uncrowns his majesty,
Planting his steadfast footsteps in the sea,
Making the heaven of heavens his dwelling-place,
Spares but the cloudy border of his base

To the foiled searching of mortality;

And thou, who didst the stars and sunbeams know,
Self-schooled, self-scanned, self-honored, self-secure,
Didst tread on earth unguessed at.-Better so!
All pains the immortal spirit must endure,
All weakness which impairs, all griefs which bow,
Find their sole speech in that victorious brow.

Matthew Arnold

'I

MIL

MILTON 1

Thou hadst a voice whose sound was like the sea,
Pure as the naked heavens, majestic, free;

So didst thou travel on life's common way
In cheerful godliness; and yet thy heart

The lowliest duties on herself did lay.

William Wordsworth

72

YOUTH'S ANTIPHONY

"I

LOVE you, sweet: how can you ever learn

How much I love you?” “You I love even so, And so I learn it.” “Sweet, you cannot know How fair you are. “If fair enough to earn Your love, so much is all my love's concern.” “My love grows hourly, sweet.” “Mine too doth grow, Yet love seemed full so many hours ago!” Thus lovers speak, till kisses claim their turn. Ah! happy they to whom such words as these In youth have served for speech the whole day long, Hour after hour, remote from the world's throng, Work, contest, fame, all life's confederate pleas,What while Love breathed in sighs and silences Through two blent souls one rapturous undersong.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti

73

O

MY Luve's like a .red, red rose

That's newly sprung in June:
O

my Luve's like the melodie
That's sweetly played in tune.

Of dearly like the west

,

F a' the airts the wind can blaw

I
For there the bonnie lassie lives,

The lassie I lo'e best:
There wild woods grow, and rivers row,

And mony a hill between;
But day and night my fancy's flight

Is ever wi' my Jean.

I see her in the dewy flowers,

I see her sweet and fair:
I hear her in the tunefu' birds,

I hear her charm the air:

Airts: directions

Row: flow