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Title: In A Church
Author: Rennell Rodd [
More Titles by Rodd]
This was the first shrine lit for Queen Marie;
And I will sit a little at her feet,
For winds without howl down the narrow street
And storm-clouds gather from the westward sea.
Sweet here to watch the peasant people pray,
While through the crimson-shrouded window falls
Low light of even, and the golden walls
Grow dim and dreamful at the end of day,
Till from these columns fades their marble sheen,
And lines grow soft and mystical,--these wraiths
That watch the service of the changing faiths,
To Mary mother from the Cyprian queen.
But aye for me this old-word colonnade
Seems open to blue summer skies once more,
These altars pass, and on the polished floor
I see the lines of chequered light and shade;
I seem to see the dark-browed Lybian lean
To cool the tortured burning of the lash,
I see the fountains as they leap and flash,
The rustling sway of cypress set between.
And now yon friar with the bare feet there,
Is grown the haunting spirit of the place;
Ah! brown-robed friar with the shaven face,
The saints are weary of thy mumbled prayer.
From matins' bell to the slow day's decline
He sits and thumbs his endless round of beads,
Drawls out the dreary cadence of his creeds
And nods assent to each familiar line.
But she the goddess whose white star is set,
Whose fane was pillaged for this sombre shrine,
Could she look down upon those lips of thine,
And hear thee mutter, would she still regret?
There came a sound of singing on my ear,
And slowly glided through the far-off door
A glimmer of grey forms like ghosts, they bore
A dead man lying on his purple bier.
Some poor man's soul, so little candle smoke
Went curling upwards by the uncased shroud,
And then a sudden thunder-clap broke loud,
And drowned the droning of the priest who spoke.
So all the shuffling feet passed out again
To lightnings flashing through the wet and wind,
And while I lingered in the gate behind
The dead man travelled through the storm and rain.
ROME, 1881.
[The end]
Rennell Rodd's poem: In A Church
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