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I. THE ATTIC temple whose majestic room | |
| Contained the presence of Olympian Jove, | |
| With smooth Hymettus round it and above, | |
| Softening the splendor by a sober bloom, | |
| Is yielding fast to Time’s irreverent doom; | 5 |
| While on the then barbarian banks of Seine | |
| That nobler type is realized again | |
| In perfect form, and dedicate—to whom? | |
| To a poor Syrian girl, of lowliest name, | |
| A hapless creature, pitiful and frail | 10 |
| As ever wore her life in sin and shame, | |
| Of whom all history has this single tale,— | |
| “She loved the Christ, she wept beside his grave, | |
| And He, for that Love’s sake, all else forgave.” | |
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II. If one, with prescient soul to understand | 15 |
| The working of this world beyond the day | |
| Of his small life, had taken by the hand | |
| That wanton daughter of old Magdala; | |
| And told her that the time was ripe to come | |
| When she, thus base among the base, should be | 20 |
| More served than all the gods of Greece and Rome, | |
| More honored in her holy memory, | |
| How would not men have mocked and she have scorned | |
| The fond diviner? Plausible excuse | |
| Had been for them, all moulded to one use | 25 |
| Of feeling and of thought, but we are warned | |
| By such ensamples to distrust the sense | |
| Of Custom proud and bold Experience. | |
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III. Thanks to that element of heavenly things, | |
| That did come down to earth, and there confound | 30 |
| Most sacred thoughts with names of usual sound, | |
| And homeliest life with all a poet sings, | |
| The proud Ideas that had ruled and bound | |
| Our moral nature were no longer kings, | |
| Old Power grew faint and shed his eagle-wings, | 35 |
| And gray Philosophy was half uncrowned. | |
| Love, Pleasure’s child, betrothed himself to Pain; | |
| Weakness, and poverty, and self-disdain, | |
| And tranquil sufferance of repeated wrongs, | |
| Became adorable; Fame gave her tongues, | 40 |
| And Faith her hearts to objects all as low | |
| As this lorn child of infamy and woe. | |
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