Matin Bells and Scarlet and Gold :: :: University of Virginia Library

Rose a weeping and a wailing for the altars unavailing
And the temple fires grown dim,
From the high angelic hosts and the Seraphs at their posts
And the sworded Cherubim.
Though the worshippers were legion and they flocked from every region
And they builded fair the shrine,
Not with walls the pious raise by their lives of prayer and praise
And the humble heart divine;
But with gold and gems and painting and the sculpture with the tainting
Of unrighteousness that wrought,
Or the offerings of vice and the souls that had their price
And in hourly sale were bought.
For the faith was empty-hearted and the light had long departed
From the cloister and its lamp,

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And the perjured breasts were cold and misgivings like the mould
Upon all had set a stamp;
And amid the pleasant places shone but harlot gauds and graces
Or lay silence of the tomb,
While the love that leapt in flame to the Presence and the Name
Died as fruit within the womb.
Then with wailing and a weeping for religion dumb and sleeping
And the glory faded thence,
Ring a solemn awful sound to the earth's remotest bound,—
“O arise, let us go hence.”

With a weeping and a wailing as if earth itself were failing
Under some tremendous throe,
And the pillars of the land could no longer now withstand
Weight of unimagined woe;
Passed a glamour from the column and the sanctuary solemn
Where the nations blindly knelt,
In the tutelary awe which was luminous with law
And by ghostly comfort felt;
While the peoples in the motion of their impotent devotion
Knew that something great had set,
And the words they mumbled still were but curses and an ill
Though they bowed and babbled yet.
For the Providences reigning from the falsehood and the feigning
With a mighty murmur fled,
And a horror grim and stark in the silence and the dark
Dropt where music had been shed;
While from fanes' august recesses went the Ever-lastingnesses

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That alone could give man breath,
And on priests and splendid frauds and the chanted lies and lauds
Fell a shadow more than death.
With a wailing and a weeping of the Powers that had the keeping
Of the altars which smoked on,
Knelled a lost and lonely cry from the temples to the sky,—
“O away, let us be gone.”

With a weeping and a wailing from the porch and gilded railing
Of the holy fabrics doomed,
Went the Presence that had been a Magnificence unseen
While the flower of worship bloomed.
Though they lifted high the ladder and the steps were sins and sadder
Than the way to heaven should be,
And were washed within the flood of the blesséd martyrs' blood,
Who had suffered to be free.
Ah, it found the earth was frozen by the empty creeds that cozen
With their superstitions fond,
As it passed into the air from the ruin past repair
Like the breaking of a bond.
There were idols framed of letters and a clanking of the fetters
Which had eaten into lives,
And the votaries were fools of their pious toys and tools
Or the sacrificial knives.
For the gods were naught and nameless and a multitude and shameless,
And the mystery had flown,
While their victims bent to chance and a crowned ignorance
And the Truth remained unknown.

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With a wailing and a weeping went the hosts angelic sweeping
Through a world without a heart,
And a voice of sorrow brake from the stillness as it spake,
“O arise, let us depart!”

With a weeping and a wailing in a cloud of glory sailing
Went the Spirit who was God,
And the ardent Seraphim and the sworded Cherubim,
Into spaces yet untrod.
There was many a rolling planet bright as when the Word began it
But polluted by one fall,
And despite the gracious glow deep a rottenness below
Rested terrible on all.
Blight had seized the worship hollow and the Nemesis to follow
Was a canker in the deed,
And no fruits of goodly faith but its dazzling idle wraith
Burst in sunshine from the seed.
Pomp of service joined with glitter of proud sacraments, but bitter
Was the reaping at the last,
For on every soul a cloud hung as heavy as a shroud
And the course was overcast.
While the pageants and the flocking to confession were a mocking
Or a masquerade of life,
And the verities were hid and beneath a coffin lid
By the selfish paltry strife.
With a wailing and a weeping at the icy darkness creeping
Through creation to its Head,
Pealed a voice upon the air of an infinite despair,—
“Without honour I am dead.”