 | Poems |  |
43
A SILENT SERMON.
Once as I wandered, just at close of day,Through the mute aisles of Rome's cathedral gray,
No other footstep broke the stillness there,
Nor whispered vows, nor solemn-breathing prayer.
Alone, half trembling at the twilight gloom
Which shrouds the temple, as it shrouds the tomb,
I stood, unwarned, before an infant's bier,—
No mourners nigh, no mother's frantic tear.
A little child, unshrined by priest or hymn,
Lay in the proud cathedral vast and dim:
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Seemed like an infant's left in sleep to rest;
Unwept, untended, there in death it lay,
A silent sermon wrapped in lifeless clay.
What living voice could speak with so much power,
As those dead lips in that still evening hour?
Priests, censers, anthems, there no feeling shed,
When face to face the living meets the dead!
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