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161

SAINT PAUL'S.

I

O not here the faint illuming, not the mystery sombre-dooming
That o'ershadows old Cathedrals of a dimly-dreaming time;
Grand as Forests with their tangles, interlacing high arch-angles,
And long alleys pillar-crowded; type of Faith that stifles, strangles
All discursive Speculation and free Reason as a crime!
Not their faery-frowning fretwork, not their glamour-lights and glooming—
'Tis another kind of grandeur makes this Temple so sublime!

II

What a thrill of exultation—sense of freedom, elevation,
As its luminous expansion seems to welcome you and cheer!
Now aspiringly ascending, and now lovingly o'erbending,
Such a whirl of golden circles so harmoniously blending!
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How the lovely lines of lustre link, dispart and reappear!
With a majesty how graceful, what a grand serene elation,
And a flowery sunny gladness, like the World's in Spring-career!

III

Tis as Nature had the moulding of this Temple—its upholding—
And had deigned to proud Invention her diviner might to prove;
So had fashioned it in keeping with the Planets in their leaping,
With the Suns and starry Systems in resplendent circles sweeping;
And that ample dome of heaven circumambient above,
In its tender blue infinitude of beauty all-enfolding,
Sweetly swathing all Creation with immensity of Love!

IV

Is not this the very Shrine for the consummate Faith men pine for,
Bright and boundless as the Future of the enfranchised human mind?
Which shall gather all the races in real Catholic embraces,
Lend idealised World-worship every Muse's gifts and graces;
When the nation to its marvel of magnificence less blind,
Shall fulfil the dream of glory 'twas imagined so divine for,
And invest it with the splendours its conceiver first designed.
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V

Then those massy piers upstanding so symmetrical, commanding,
Flute and fillet shall be tinted with striation flowery-warm;
And the rainbow arcs diverging from them everyway, and merging
In the maze of circled beauty, as o'er cataract-clouds upsurging,
Shall be robed in radiant colours iridescent as their form;
While a thousand golden gleamings, to the Dome's superb expanding,
Flash around as happy Earth's do, when Hope's symbol crowns the storm.

VI

Then those windows peristylar, free from mullion, mask, or viler
Leaden lattice, shall seem gateways clear to heaven's empyreal glow;
Where, with plumes—on viewless crystal—ruby, emerald, amethystal,
Shall great typical Archangels, ardour-fired or rapture-whist all,
Hush the dome—like sacred sunrise—as they stand in burning row,
On its sill each new-alighted, or down-looking with grave smile, or
Beckoning upward, ere it soar off, the aspiring hearts below.

VII

There the Lords of Light and Science—there the Heroes whose defiance
Of the bigotries and tyrannies bade grovelling Man arise;
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There to kindle high emotion, martyr-deeds of deep devotion,
On the scaffold, in the dungeon, on the battle-field or ocean—
All the world-ennobling wonders of sublime self-sacrifice
Shall appeal with dumb persuasion, shall relive for rich appliance,
In white permanence of marble, in mosaic's deathless dyes.

VIII

There shall soft choir-voices stealing through tumultuous thunder-pealing
Float like blossoms snowy-blissful on the Music-storm around,
Rock in soaring undulation or descend each sweet gradation
In the silvery-falling torrent of ecstatic adoration:
All the grand apocalypses of soul-elevating Sound
Shall each ocean-cave uncover of unfathomed human Feeling,
And awaken far-off echoes in its mountain-glens profound!

IX

For that Ritual shall be laden with Arts richnesses—arrayed in
All the lightnings of the outer and the inner world in turn;
Take the Reason, take the Senses—take whatever most intense is
To upwaft the wayward Spirit to ethereal influences;
As a Naiad by both handles would uplift her sparry urn
To a diamond-spattering fountain; as you raise a drowning Maiden
By her hand, her hair, her raiment—any hold you first discern.
165

X

Then shall Genius seek and sort all the experience of this mortal
And so multiform Existence, individual and whole;
Skim the cream off all the Ages—sound the hearts of Saints and Sages,
Fan to flame the inspiration of a hundred Poets' pages;
Keenly peering at two Miracles to pierce their mystic stole—
The sweet miracle of Nature through the Sense's sunny portal—
Through the portal of dusk Consciousness, the miracle of Soul.

XI

Then the Splendour-shroud unskeining of the Sensuous round us reigning,
Then shall Science show 'tis Spirit weaves cocoon-like that rich veil;
On the gossamer webs of Guidance as they float without subsidence
Through the ages, flash her sunlight; mark their mystical abidance
In each single life to lure it to its blessing here or bale;
And as History sluices, sifts them, keep felicitously straining
From auriferous Time-deposits, Hope's precipitate gold grail.

XII

Then 'twill be our bliss securer, not to blench at Reason purer,
But to launch the joyous Spirit with a large abandonment
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On the Infinite over—under us; with no cramped conceits to sunder us,
In the frank assimilation and right welcome of the wonderous,
Let the Soul expand and revel to the topmost of its bent;
Well persuaded that the wider Feeling's reach is, all the surer
With Reality and Truth will be its harmonised concent;

XIII

Never doubting, each pursuer—every mighty-hearted wooer
Of those measureless high majesties, the Universe and Man,
That the deeper we explore them, and the freelier we adore them,
And the more erect and boldlier we bear ourselves before them,
The clearlier shall we gather their significance and plan;
Be more certain that our logic is more luminous and truer
The more generous its deductions from the Infinite we scan!

XIV

Then no creed that scantly blesses, scares and curses and represses,
Shall restrain the grander instincts—chain the Sun-aspiring brood;
But a full enchanting river of conceptions of the Giver
Of Existence, ever broadening, ever brightening, shall for ever
Waft us welcomer convictions that its end is wholly good;
Ever lead to loftier darings and sublimer tendernesses,
And still wider love and warmer for the human brotherhood!
167

XV

But for such a faith of soaring Sense and Reason far exploring,
All of Love and Light commingled—universal—disenthralled,
Were not this the happy station, this imperial illustration
And epitome, the loveliest, the lordliest, of Creation
With its many-circling splendours, starry-wheeling, golden-balled—
Which when England crowns, completes it, all poor pedantries ignoring,
Not one gate but the whole Temple shall The Beautiful be called?
1873.
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