Lost Chords [Verse]. (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: Cbartree Catbebral. FROM western forests daylight sends Departing splendour ere it dies; Its death-blood, as the Centaur's, blends With all the lace-like draperies Of this vast front in crimson dyes: And, high above, where birds are wheeling Around the spire, that climbs the skies As if to ask a new revealing, Stars seem in silent answer on the summit stealing. The Past can tell what arts have striven To raise, with Titan arm, this tower, Yet undefiant, unto Heaven; No Babel marred that crowning hour; A Sabbath of creative power Seems resting on the symmetry Of aery shaft and carven flower That buds and blooms unfadingly, And pinnacles still climbing ladder-like on high. An Angel form with golden wings Is watching eastward o'er the town; And now the bell gigantic flings Its burden from the belfry down: On waves of air unceasing thrown To hamlets on the distant plain With holiest messages 'tis flown, And yet no curfew; for again Lights at its call are lit within the darkening fane. There massive sapphire-tinted sheen Of windows crown the columned line; The pattern on the mountain seen Is dight as from the Indian mine; Above each taper-lighted shrine The heaven-lit glories still prevail, But on the altar most combine Their hues; as if the rending veil Had bared the Light in which all temple-lamps grew pale. There is an antique grot below;? Once Druids hymned a virgin there; Nor dreamed they that their oaks would grow To this fair sanctuary of prayer, In which the evangel-strains, more rare, Would silence all their harps' surmising, And arches hang where leaves once were; Faith teach new marvels of devising, And Art from Syria take another rising. The glories of Isaiah's trance ...