| |
| SO rest, for ever rest, O Princely Pair! | |
| In your high Church, ’mid the still mountain air, | |
| Where horn, and hound, and vassals, never come. | |
| Only the blessed Saints are smiling dumb | |
| From the rich painted windows of the nave | 5 |
| On aisle, and transept, and your marble grave: | |
| Where thou, young Prince, shalt never more arise | |
| From the fring’d mattress where thy Duchess lies, | |
| On autumn mornings, when the bugle sounds, | |
| And ride across the drawbridge with thy hounds | 10 |
| To hunt the boar in the crisp woods till eve. | |
| And thou, O Princess, shalt no more receive, | |
| Thou and thy ladies, in the hall of state, | |
| The jaded hunters with their bloody freight, | |
| Coming benighted to the castle gate. | 15 |
| So sleep, for ever sleep, O Marble Pair! | |
| Or, if ye wake, let it be then, when fair | |
| On the carv’d Western Front a flood of light | |
| Streams from the setting sun, and colours bright | |
| Prophets, transfigur’d Saints, and Martyrs brave, | 20 |
| In the vast western window of the nave; | |
| And on the pavement round the Tomb there glints | |
| A chequer-work of glowing sapphire tints, | |
| And amethyst, and ruby;—then unclose | |
| Your eyelids on the stone where ye repose, | 25 |
| And from your broider’d pillows lift your heads, | |
| And rise upon your cold white marble beds; | |
| And looking down on the warm rosy tints | |
| That chequer, at your feet, the illumin’d flints, | |
| Say—‘What is this? we are in bliss—forgiven— | 30 |
| Behold the pavement of the courts of Heaven!’— | |
| Or let it be on autumn nights, when rain | |
| Doth rustlingly above your heads complain | |
| On the smooth leaden roof, and on the walls | |
| Shedding her pensive light at intervals | 35 |
| The Moon through the clere-story windows shines, | |
| And the wind wails among 1 the mountain pines. | |
| Then, gazing up through the dim pillars high, | |
| The foliag’d marble forest where ye lie, | |
| ‘Hush’—ye will say—‘it is eternity. | 40 |
| This is the glimmering verge of Heaven, and these | |
| The columns of the Heavenly Palaces.’— | |
| And in the sweeping of the wind your ear | |
| The passage of the Angels’ wings will hear, | |
| And on the lichen-crusted leads above | 45 |
| The rustle of the eternal rain of Love. | |
