The Vision of Prophecy and Other Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

The same hills stand around it, and it lends
A beauty to the spot it graced of yore;
The old winds haunt it still; each season bends
The light and shadow round it as before;
But Time hath swathed it in his garb of grey;
It feels the load of years, and slowly wastes away.

How many suns have gone up that fair sky,
Since first its builders reared it, stone by stone!
How oft has midnight, with her star-blue eye,
Beheld it in the valley dim and lone!
Age has erased its date, and it appears
To grey-haired men the same as in their childish years.

Yet what they heard in childhood still they tell:
How in the ancient time a shepherd found
An image of the Virgin, by a well
That gurgled up within this narrow bound,

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How this to mystic auguries gave scope,
Until a chapel rose,—Our Lady's Shrine of Hope.

Then rung the small bell at the dawn of day,
And duly as the waning light was pale
Upon the peaks, its chimes were borne away
In mellowing cadences far up the vale:
The goatherd heard it on the uplands bare,
And crossed his swarthy brow, and said his evening prayer.

And down these mountain paths, when Sabbath rest
Was on the valleys, worshippers were seen
Thronging obedient to the mild behest,
Or on the ways that wind through chestnuts green.
And if with erring rites they bent the knee,
Be theirs the guilt who sealed the Word that should be free.

But Time's bell rung a dirge, and now have ceased
The chant sonorous—the exulting hymn;
Fallen is the altar where the vested priest,
While lights through steaming incense glimmered dim,
To act the dread Atonement fondly strove,
As if the cross were vain, and Calvary's dying love!

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The wild weeds rustle on the arches tall,
The wind-sown grass springs rank upon the floor.
The restless bramble muffles court and wall,
And nets its thorny curtain in the door,
And moss-stained stones, sunk deep into the mould,
Have here, since first they fell, had leisure to growold.

Yet, ancient pile! the elements that waste
Deal gently, for they soften and atone,—
A milder beauty they have round thee cast,—
With richer tints have crusted every stone:
It is a silent power that Time employs,
Which veils his certain end, and decks what he destroys.

Therefore thou enviest not the leafy trees
Nor the old hills, which, with a steadfast eye,
Confront time's lifted scythe through centuries,
Knowing that when they perish, he must die:
Since out of this slow waste a pensive grace
Has grown, which beautifies the solitary place.

For all decay tends ever towards peace;
Deep at its heart lives silence, and the rest
Which nature by continual ministries
Breathes to us out of her maternal breast;

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And here the same sweet influence soothes and thrills
My spirit, as among the lonely woods and hills.

The white-towered city far below me lies,
Beyond it spreads the calm, blue Libyan Sea:
And on the furthest limit of the skies,
A long, low, purple cloud hangs hazily,
That seems, thus dim with light, a summer isle,
For which Heaven's festive face doth ever keep a smile.

But when on all earth's beauty shall there be
A consecration? when shall promised days
With light unwaning brighten land and sea?
Even here, as through the future time I gaze,
A hopeful omen rises in my heart,
A vision cheers the way by which I now depart.

Decaying as thou art, thou may'st still stand
To hear the sound of Christian psalms once more,
To see a purer faith exalt the land,
A holier ministration than before;
Thus, by a blessing to thy youth denied,
Thy latest age may be serenely glorified.