The Poetical Works of Walter C. Smith :: :: University of Virginia Library

It is a Church of the Ages, all
Arched and pillared and grandly towered,
With many a niche on the buttressed wall,
And delicate tracery, scrolled and flowered:
Gargoyles gape, and arches fly
From base to base of the pinnacles high,
And the great cross points to the solemn sky.

A stately Church, and a Church all through,
Everywhere shaped by a thought divine,
With symbols of Him who is Just and True,
And emblems of Him who is Bread and Wine;
It is dowered with wealth of land and gold,
And memories high of the days of old,
And of sheep that were lost, gathered into its fold.

Lord bishops sleep their slumber deep
Under mitre and crosier carved in stone;
There are brasses quaint for the warrior saint
Who had battled at Acre and Ascalon;
In the low-groined crypts lie dukes and earls,
Resting now from their plots and quarrels,
But they mix not their dust with the rustic carles.

It is not day, and it is not dark,
And the altar-lights are burning dim;
One sings, but it is not priest nor clerk,
And he chaunts no psalm, and he sings no hymn.
Who are these that are trooping in,
With grimy visage, and bearded chin,
Rude and unmannered, with noisy din?

Some one is wailing—a poor soul ailing
Down in the dim aisles far away;
Who is that droning? is he intoning
The great Athanasian creed to-day?
Silence that chatter and laughter there,
And do not stand bonneted up to stare—
Hush! that is surely the voice of prayer.

First Voice
They have made Thy Temple a place abhorred,
They have mocked Thy Christ, for His own betrayed Him;
And now they have taken away my Lord,
Ah woe! and I know not where they have laid Him.

145

Second Voice
Now that the gods are certainly dead—
Brahma and Zeus and the Father, and all—
With a desk and a lime-light overhead,
We might use this up for a lecture-hall.
We could show them things on the altar there—
Bringing the light to the proper focus—
Wonderful transformations rare,
Would beat the priests with their hocus-pocus:
With two or three chemicals we could make
Nature her miracle-power surrender,
And a glass, at the angle fit, would wake
As gruesome a ghost as the witch of Endor.
Everything here would give point to my hits
At the monk's huge faith, and his little wits,
As I drive at Bigots, and shout for Truth,
And laugh at the dreams of the world's raw youth.

Third Voice
A pest on all the reforming crew,
Savant or Puritan, old or new!
See how the rogues come tramping in,
Now that they have not to praise or pray—
Faugh! what a breath of tobacco and gin!
They crowd to church because God is away!
And they've smashed that pitying angel's face,
That touched one's heart with a tender grace,
None of their brute-wits could ever replace.
If there be angels good or bad,
I very much doubt, and I do not much care;
But yet what a pitying look it had,
Beaming down from the oriel there!
Will no one silence that idiot's chatter
About laws, forsooth, of health and riches?
I'd rather the old priest's Stabat Mater—
If we had but the ordeal now for witches,
Wouldn't I souse him into the water!

Fourth Voice
Anathema Maranatha! Hark!
Be he sinner or be he saint,
There is no place in the saving Ark
For one who keeps but a cobweb faint
Of doubt in his heart, or doubt in his head,
About any one article I have read.
“Credo,” that is the key of heaven;
The more incredible, so much more
Virtue lies in the Credo, given
To open the everlasting door.
Thurifer, let the censer wave:
“Hoc est corpus,” lift it high;
Christ is risen from the stone-sealed grave;
Now let us forth with him, and die
Into the life that comes thereby.
In high procession the priests will go
Chaunting the Dies Irae low,
Dies illa, sad and slow.
So the Church in the days of old,
Robed in linen and purple and gold,
Foiled the devil, and all his tricks,
And drove out the swine with a crucifix.

First Voice
(far away)
“They have taken away my Lord,
And I know not where they have laid him!”

146

So it went wailing down the long aisle,
Mixed with the hum of the priest and the people;
And a shudder passed through the massive pile,
From the low-groined crypt to the cross on the steeple:
And the glimmering lights on the altar died,
No more the priest-hymn sobbed and sighed,
But a hollow wind wailed through the transept wide.