I OFT have I seen at some cathedral door | |
| A laborer, pausing in the dust and heat, | |
| Lay down his burden, and with reverent feet | |
| Enter, and cross himself, and on the floor | |
| Kneel to repeat his paternoster o’er; | 5 |
| Far off the noises of the world retreat; | |
| The loud vociferations of the street | |
| Become an undistinguishable roar. | |
| So, as I enter here from day to day, | |
| And leave my burden at this minster gate, | 10 |
| Kneeling in prayer, and not ashamed to pray, | |
| The tumult of the time disconsolate | |
| To inarticulate murmurs dies away, | |
| While the eternal ages watch and wait. | |
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II How strange the sculptures that adorn these towers! | 15 |
| This crowd of statues, in whose folded sleeves | |
| Birds build their nests; while canopied with leaves | |
| Parvis and portal bloom like trellised bowers, | |
| And the vast minster seems a cross of flowers! | |
| But fiends and dragons on the gargoyled eaves | 20 |
| Watch the dead Christ between the living thieves, | |
| And, underneath, the traitor Judas lowers! | |
| Ah! from what agonies of heart and brain, | |
| What exultations trampling on despair, | |
| What tenderness, what tears, what hate of wrong, | 25 |
| What passionate outcry of a soul in pain, | |
| Uprose this poem of the earth and air, | |
| This mediæval miracle of song! | |
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III I enter, and I see thee in the gloom | |
| Of the long aisles, O poet saturnine! | 30 |
| And strive to make my steps keep pace with thine. | |
| The air is filled with some unknown perfume; | |
| The congregation of the dead make room | |
| For thee to pass; the votive tapers shine; | |
| Like rooks that haunt Ravenna’s groves of pine | 35 |
| The hovering echoes fly from tomb to tomb. | |
| From the confessionals I hear arise | |
| Rehearsals of forgotten tragedies, | |
| And lamentations from the crypts below; | |
| And then a voice celestial that begins | 40 |
| With the pathetic words, “Although your sins | |
| As scarlet be,” and ends with “as the snow.” | |
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IV With snow-white veil and garments as of flame, | |
| She stands before thee, who so long ago | |
| Filled thy young heart with passion and the woe | 45 |
| From which thy song and all its splendors came; | |
| And while with stern rebuke she speaks thy name, | |
| The ice about thy heart melts as the snow | |
| On mountain heights, and in swift overflow | |
| Comes gushing from thy lips in sobs of shame. | 50 |
| Thou makest full confession; and a gleam, | |
| As of the dawn on some dark forest cast, | |
| Seems on thy lifted forehead to increase; | |
| Lethe and Eunoë—the remembered dream | |
| And the forgotten sorrow—bring at last | 55 |
| That perfect pardon which is perfect peace. | |
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V I lift mine eyes, and all the windows blaze | |
| With forms of Saints and holy men who died, | |
| Here martyred and hereafter glorified; | |
| And the great Rose upon its leaves displays | 60 |
| Christ’s Triumph, and the angelic roundelays, | |
| With splendor upon splendor multiplied; | |
| And Beatrice again at Dante’s side | |
| No more rebukes, but smiles her words of praise. | |
| And then the organ sounds, and unseen choirs | 65 |
| Sing the old Latin hymns of peace and love | |
| And benedictions of the Holy Ghost; | |
| And the melodious bells among the spires | |
| O’er all the house-tops and through heaven above | |
| Proclaim the elevation of the Host! | 70 |
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VI O star of morning and of liberty! | |
| O bringer of the light, whose splendor shines | |
| Above the darkness of the Apennines, | |
| Forerunner of the day that is to be! | |
| The voices of the city and the sea, | 75 |
| The voices of the mountains and the pines, | |
| Repeat thy song, till the familiar lines | |
| Are footpaths for the thought of Italy! | |
| Thy flame is blown abroad from all the heights, | |
| Through all the nations, and a sound is heard, | 80 |
| As of a mighty wind, and men devout, | |
| Strangers of Rome, and the new proselytes, | |
| In their own language hear thy wondrous word, | |
| And many are amazed and many doubt. | |
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