THE PROCESSION.
“‘The peace which passeth all understanding,’ disclosed itself in her
looks and movements. It lay on her countenance like a steady unshadowed
moonlight.”
Coleridge.
There were trampling sounds of many feet,
And music rush'd through the crowded street;
Proud music, such as tells the sky
Of a chief return'd from victory.
There were banners to the winds unroll'd,
With haughty words on each blazon'd fold;
High battle-names, which had rung of yore,
When lances clash'd on the Syrian shore.
Borne from their dwellings, green and lone,
There were flowers of the woods on the pathway strown;
And wheels that crush'd as they swept along—
Oh! what doth the violet amidst the throng?
I saw where a bright procession pass'd
The gates of a minster old and vast;
And a king to his crowning place was led,
Through a sculptured line of the warrior dead.
I saw, far gleaming, the long array
Of trophies, on those high tombs that lay,
And the colour'd light, that wrapp'd them all,
Rich, deep, and sad, as a royal pall.
But a lowlier grave soon won mine eye
Away from th' ancestral pageantry:
A grave by the lordly minster's gate,
Unhonour'd, and yet not desolate.
It was but a dewy greensward bed,
Meet for the rest of a peasant head;
But Love—oh! lovelier than all beside!—
That lone place guarded and glorified.
For a gentle form stood watching there,
Young—but how sorrowfully fair!
Keeping the flowers of the holy spot,
That reckless feet might profane them not.
Clear, pale and clear, was the tender cheek,
And her eye, though tearful, serenely meek;
And I deem'd, by its lifted gaze of love,
That her sad heart's treasure was all above.
For alone she seem'd 'midst the throng to be,
Like a bird of the waves far away at sea;
Alone, in a mourner's vest array'd,
And with folded hands, e'en as if she pray'd.
It faded before me, that masque of pride,
The haughty swell of the music died;
Banner, and armour, and tossing plume,
All melted away in the twilight's gloom.
But that orphan form, with its willowy grace,
And the speaking prayer in that pale, calm face,
Still, still o'er my thoughts in the night-hour glide—
—Oh! Love is lovelier than all beside.
