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I LIKE a church; I like a cowl; | |
I love a prophet of the soul; | |
And on my heart monastic aisles | |
Fall like sweet strains or pensive smiles; | |
Yet not for all his faith can see | 5 |
Would I that cowlèd churchman be. | |
Why should the vest on him allure, | |
Which I could not on me endure? | |
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Not from a vain or shallow thought | |
His awful Jove young Phidias brought; | 10 |
Never from lips of cunning fell | |
The thrilling Delphic oracle: | |
Out from the heart of nature rolled | |
The burdens of the Bible old; | |
The litanies of nations came, | 15 |
Like the volcanos tongue of flame, | |
Up from the burning core below, | |
The canticles of love and woe. | |
The hand that rounded Peters dome, | |
And groined the aisles of Christian Rome, | 20 |
Wrought in a sad sincerity; | |
Himself from God he could not free; | |
He builded better than he knew; | |
The conscious stone to beauty grew. | |
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Knowest thou what wove yon woodbirds nest | 25 |
Of leaves, and feathers from her breast? | |
Or how the fish outbuilt her shell, | |
Painting with morn each annual cell? | |
Or how the sacred pine-tree adds | |
To her old leaves new myriads? | 30 |
Such and so grew these holy piles, | |
Whilst love and terror laid the tiles. | |
Earth proudly wears the Parthenon, | |
As the best gem upon her zone; | |
And Morning opes with haste her lids, | 35 |
To gaze upon the Pyramids; | |
Oer Englands abbeys bends the sky, | |
As on its friends, with kindred eye; | |
For, out of Thoughts interior sphere, | |
These wonders rose to upper air; | 40 |
And Nature gladly gave them place, | |
Adopted them into her race, | |
And granted them an equal date | |
With Andes and with Ararat. | |
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These temples grew as grows the grass; | 45 |
Art might obey, but not surpass. | |
The passive Master lent his hand | |
To the vast Soul that oer him planned; | |
And the same power that reared the shrine | |
Bestrode the tribes that knelt within. | 50 |
Ever the fiery Pentecost | |
Girds with one flame the countless host, | |
Trances the heart through chanting choirs, | |
And through the priest the mind inspires. | |
The word unto the prophet spoken | 55 |
Was writ on tables yet unbroken; | |
The word by seers or sibyls told, | |
In groves of oak, or fanes of gold, | |
Still floats upon the morning wind, | |
Still whispers to the willing mind. | 60 |
One accent of the Holy Ghost | |
The heedless world hath never lost. | |
I know what say the fathers wise, | |
The Book itself before me lies, | |
Old Chrysostom, best Augustine, | 65 |
And he who blent both in his line, | |
The younger Golden Lips or mines, | |
Taylor, the Shakespeare of divines. | |
His words are music in my ear, | |
I see his cowlèd portrait dear; | 70 |
And yet, for all his faith could see, | |
I would not the good bishop be. | |
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