 | Poems by a Painter |  |
26
ROSLIN CHAPEL.
In the husht summer noon I stood aloneIn Roslin's sylvan fane. No sound was heard,
Save the far, fitful fluting of one bird,
And the low river-voices murmuring on
Amid the leaves their faint antiphonies.
And here, I said—as fancy backward ranged
Through all the dim, tumultuous centuries—
For ever through the changing years unchanged,
With silence for its guardian angel, stands
This wondrous temple, reared by mortal hands,
But deckt by hands immortal, as a shrine
Sacred to beauty and eternal thought,
Where every creed may worship. Touch it not,
O man, with impious hands! The house is God's—not thine!
May 5, 1861.
| Poems by a Painter | |