Massive, iron-studded portals!
Sack the house of God, and scatter
Wide the ashes of the dead!
O, we cannot !
The Apostles
And the Martyrs, wrapped in mantles,
Stand as warders at the entrance,
Stand as sentinels o'erhead!
THE BELLS.
Excito lentos!
Dissipo ventos!
Paco cruentos!
Baffled! baffled!
Inefficient,
Craven spirits! leave this labor
Unto Time, the great Destroyer!
Come away, ere night is gone!
Onward! onward!
With the night-wind,
Over field and farm and forest,
Lonely homestead, darksome hamlet,
Blighting all we breathe upon!
They sweep away. Organ and Gregorian Chant.
Nocte surgentes
Vigilemus omnes!
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
CHAUNT.
Kyrie Eleison!
Christe Eleison !
I am at home here in my father's house!
These paintings of the Saints upon the walls
Have all familiar and benignant faces.
The portraits of the family of God!
Thine own hereafter shall be placed among them.
How very grand it is and wonderful !
Never have I beheld a church so splendid!
Such columns, and such arches, and such windows,
So many tombs and statues in the chapels,
And under them so many confessionals.
They must be for the rich. I should not like
To tell my sins in such a church as this.
PRINCE HENRY.
A great master of his craft,
Erwin von Steinbach; but not he alone,
For many generations labored with him.
Children that came to see these Saints in stone,
As day by day out of the blocks they rose,
Grew old and died, and still the work went on,
And on, and on, and is not yet completed.
The generation that succeeds our own
Perhaps may finish it. The architect
Built his great heart into these sculptured stones,
And with him toiled his children, and their lives
Were builded, with his own, into the walls,
As offerings unto God. You see that statue
Fixing its joyous, but deep-wrinkled eyes
Upon the Pillar of the Angels yonder.
That is the image of the master, carved
By the fair hand of his own child, Sabina.
How beautiful is the column that he looks at !
That, too, she sculptured. At the base of it
Stand the Evangelists; above their heads
Four Angels blowing upon marble trumpets,
And over them the blessed Christ, surrounded
By his attendant ministers, upholding
The instruments of his passion.
Would I could leave behind me upon earth
Some monument to thy glory, such as this!
A greater monument than this thou leavest
In thine own life, all purity and love!
See, too, the Rose, above the western portal
Flamboyant with a thousand gorgeous colors,
The perfect flower of Gothic loveliness!
And, in the gallery, the long line of statues,
Christ with his twelve Apostles watching us.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
To say how many I scarcely dare, Three of us stood in Strasburg streets,
In the wide and open square,
Where, quaint and old, and touched with the gold
Of a summer morn, at stroke of noon
The tongue of the great Cathedral tolled,
And into the church with the crowd we strolled
To see their wonder, the famous Clock.
Well, my love, there are clocks a many,
As big as a house, as small as a penny;
And clocks there be with voices as queer
As any that torture human ear,
Clocks that grunt, and clocks that growl,
That wheeze like a pump, and hoot like an owl,
From the coffin shape with its brooding face
That stands on the stair (you know the place),
Saying, "Click, cluck," like an ancient hen,
A-gathering the minutes home again,
To the kitchen knave with its wooden stutter,
Doing equal work with double splutter,
Yelping, "Click, clack," with a vulgar jerk,
As much as to say, "Just see me work!"
But of all the clocks that tell Time's bead-roll,
There are none like this in the old Cathedral;
Never a one so bids you stand
While it deals the minutes with even hand:
For clocks, like men, are better and worse,
And some you dote on, and some you curse;
Aud clock and man may have such a way
Of telling the truth that you can't say nay.
So in we went and stood in the crowd
To hear the old clock as it crooned aloud,
With sound and symbol, the only tongue
The maker taught it while yet 't was young.
And we saw Saint Peter clasp his hands,
And the cock crow hoarsely to all the lands,
And the Twelve Apostles come and go,
And the solemn Christ pass sadly and slow;
And strange that iron-legged procession,
And odd to us the whole impression,
As the crowd beneath, in silence pressing,
Bent to that cold mechanic blessing.
But I alone thought far in my soul
What a touch of genius was in the whole,
And felt how graceful had been the thought
Which for the signs of the months had sought,
Sweetest of symbols, Christ's chosen train;
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