 | Three Hundred Sonnets |  |
247
THE SAME: NORMANDY.
Thou sad Romance in stone among the seas,—Monstrous Chimæra, saint and fiend in one,
Where the Archangel, soaring to the sun,
Feels the brute serpent coil'd about his knees:
O pinnacles, and flying buttresses
Rear'd on a festering heap of foul and base;
O hallow'd Pharos, rank with oily lees;
O censer, spoil'd of all thy fragrant grace,—
Alas! how fair, how fearful is this place!
Round it, the garden of Hesperides
Once bloom'd,—with that ‘old dragon’ for a guard
The stone Kimmerian windings of Carnac;
But now, the light that since blazed heavenward
Is quench'd,—and all again is utter black!
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