Thus spake the pilgrims o'er this mighty wall 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 Arch, empire, each thing round the, and man plods 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 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 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, 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, To whom she renders back the debt of blood 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! 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 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, 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, 5. CLVI. Thou novest-but increasing with the advance, Vastness which grows-but grows to harmonize- Rich marbles—richer painting-shrines where flame Thou seest not all; but piecemeal thou must break To separate contemplation, the great whole; And as the ocean many bays will make, 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 |