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The Convert Talks to His Friend
A NOBLE structure truly! as you say,— | |
| Clear, spacious, large in feeling and design, | |
| Just what a church should be,—I grant alway | |
| There may be faults, great faults, yet I opine | |
| Less on the whole than elsewhere may be found. | 5 |
| But let its faults go—out of human thought | |
| Was nothing ever builded, written, wrought, | |
| That one can say is whole, complete, and round; | |
| Your snarling critic gloats upon defects, | |
| And any fool among the architects | 10 |
| Can pick you out a hundred different flaws; | |
| But who of them, with all his talking, draws | |
| A church to match it? View it as a whole, | |
| Not part by part, with those mean little eyes, | |
| That cannot love, but only criticise, | 15 |
| How grand a body! with how large a soul! | |
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| Seen from without, how well it bodies forth | |
| Rome’s proud religion—nothing mean and small | |
| In its proportion, and above it all | |
| A central dome of thought, a forehead bare | 20 |
| That rises in this soft Italian air | |
| Big with its intellect, and far away, | |
| When lesser domes have sunken in the earth, | |
| Stands for all Rome uplifted in the day, | |
| An art-born brother of the mountains there. | 25 |
| See what an invitation it extends | |
| To the world’s pilgrims, be they foes or friends. | |
| Its colonnades, with wide embracing arms, | |
| Spread forth as if to bless and shield from harms, | |
| And draw them to its heart, the inner shrine, | 30 |
| From the grand outer precincts, where alway | |
| The living fountains wave their clouds of spray, | |
| And temper with cool sound the hot sunshine. | |
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| Step in,—behind your back the curtain swings; | |
| The world is left outside with worldly things. | 35 |
| How still! save where vague echoes rise and fall, | |
| Dying along the distance, what a sense | |
| Of peace and silence hovers over all, | |
| That tones the marbled aisle’s magnificence, | |
| And frescoed vaults and ceilings deep with gold, | 40 |
| To its own quiet.—See! how grand and bold, | |
| Key of the whole, swells up the airy dome | |
| Where the apostles hold their lofty home, | |
| And angels hover in the misted height, | |
| And amber shafts of sunset bridge with light | 45 |
| Its quivering air—while low the organ groans, | |
| And from the choir’s gilt cages tangling tones | |
| Whirl fuguing up, and play and float aloft, | |
| And in its vast bell die in echoes soft. | |
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| And mark! our church hath its own atmosphere, | 50 |
| That varies not with seasons of the year, | |
| But ever keeps its even temperate air, | |
| And soft, large light without offensive glare. | |
| No sombre, Gothic sadness here abides | |
| To awe the sense—no sullen shadow hides | 55 |
| In its clear spaces—but a light as warm | |
| And broad as charity smiles o’er the whole, | |
| And joyous art and color’s festal charm | |
| Refine the senses and uplift the soul. * * * * * | |
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