Poems By Edward Quillinan. With a Memoir by William Johnston |
 |
|
| I. |
| II. |
| I. |
| II. |
| I. |
| II. |
| III. |
| IV. |
| I. |
| II. |
| III. |
| I. |
| II. |
|
| I. |
| II. |
INTERIOR OF CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL, AS SEEN BY MOONLIGHT, SEPTEMBER 30, 1841. |
|
| I. |
| II. |
| III. |
| IV. |
| V. |
| VI. |
| VII. |
| VIII. |
 | Poems |  |
145
INTERIOR OF CANTERBURY CATHEDRAL, AS SEEN BY MOONLIGHT, SEPTEMBER 30, 1841.
A spirit haunts to-night this reverend pile,
The moon, the ghostly vestal of the aisle;
Spirit of power, and not o'er hearts alone;
She sheds a tender charm on glass and stone;
The pillars of the temple, sign'd with light,
Attest the beauty of the soul of night;
The solemn arches, delicately flect,
Smile with a grace that thanks its architect.
A semicirque of yonder oriel shows
As soft an arch as sunlit showers disclose;
Yet all the heighten'd colours of the prism
Are glowing there, distinct without a schism.
Yon sumptuous window sparkles like a mine
Of votive gems, restored to Becket's shrine;
Stray flakes of light to kiss the floor come down,
Like jewels shaken from the martyr's crown.
The monumental effigies confess
The presence of her touching loveliness:
Yon pair, where Life and Death their moral teach,
Inform'd by her, more eloquently preach:
Beneath a gorgeous canopy, with all
Official gauds of pomp pontifical,
The robed and mitred hierarch o'erlays
The grim anatomy of what he was;
So falls the gleam that in their silent strife
Attenuate Death shines more than swelling Life.
Lo, one who stands those forms supine beside,
More like a vision than an earthly bride;
Her pale cheek hallow'd by the lambent ray
That streams its effluence on the sculptured clay.
Oh wherefore lingers she at such a tomb,
She whose May-wreath was twined of orange-bloom?
“My own beloved! in life and death my own,
What say those fearful monitors of stone,
Proud Chicheley and his skeleton beneath?”
“That in the midst of life we are in death.”
“No more?”—“Aye more,” replied the stedfast wife,
“That in the midst of death we are in life;
The nearer death the nearer life are we,
That only to allure us seems to flee.”
The moon, the ghostly vestal of the aisle;
Spirit of power, and not o'er hearts alone;
She sheds a tender charm on glass and stone;
The pillars of the temple, sign'd with light,
Attest the beauty of the soul of night;
The solemn arches, delicately flect,
Smile with a grace that thanks its architect.
A semicirque of yonder oriel shows
As soft an arch as sunlit showers disclose;
Yet all the heighten'd colours of the prism
Are glowing there, distinct without a schism.
Yon sumptuous window sparkles like a mine
Of votive gems, restored to Becket's shrine;
146
Like jewels shaken from the martyr's crown.
The monumental effigies confess
The presence of her touching loveliness:
Yon pair, where Life and Death their moral teach,
Inform'd by her, more eloquently preach:
Beneath a gorgeous canopy, with all
Official gauds of pomp pontifical,
The robed and mitred hierarch o'erlays
The grim anatomy of what he was;
So falls the gleam that in their silent strife
Attenuate Death shines more than swelling Life.
Lo, one who stands those forms supine beside,
More like a vision than an earthly bride;
Her pale cheek hallow'd by the lambent ray
That streams its effluence on the sculptured clay.
Oh wherefore lingers she at such a tomb,
She whose May-wreath was twined of orange-bloom?
“My own beloved! in life and death my own,
What say those fearful monitors of stone,
Proud Chicheley and his skeleton beneath?”
“That in the midst of life we are in death.”
147
“That in the midst of death we are in life;
The nearer death the nearer life are we,
That only to allure us seems to flee.”
What strain comes floating up the length of nave,
A chaunt that might be music from the grave,
The wail of Shades as if in cloistral gloom
Confined, and longing for the trump of doom?
One living voice supplies the teeming strain,
Which choral echoes dreamily sustain.
Pale listeners feel, but hardly know they listen,
And tearless eyes with more than feeling glisten:
Hush'd hearts are rapt beyond the lunar sphere,
By faith transported to the eternal year,
With all their wrongs and sorrows, every pain
Of dear regret, too, following in her train,
And catching as she soars a glory won
From Him who kindles moonlight from the sun,
Whose blazing orb itself is but the dim
Reflection of a glance benign from Him.
A chaunt that might be music from the grave,
The wail of Shades as if in cloistral gloom
Confined, and longing for the trump of doom?
One living voice supplies the teeming strain,
Which choral echoes dreamily sustain.
Pale listeners feel, but hardly know they listen,
And tearless eyes with more than feeling glisten:
Hush'd hearts are rapt beyond the lunar sphere,
By faith transported to the eternal year,
With all their wrongs and sorrows, every pain
Of dear regret, too, following in her train,
And catching as she soars a glory won
From Him who kindles moonlight from the sun,
Whose blazing orb itself is but the dim
Reflection of a glance benign from Him.
| Poems | |