Paris in 1815 - Part
XLI.
Pompous!—but love I not such pomp of prayer;
Ill bends the heart 'mid mortal luxury.
Rather let me the meek devotion share,
Where, in their silent glens and thickets high,
England, thy lone and lowly chapels lie.
The spotless table by the eastern wall,
The marble, rudely traced with names gone by,
The pale-eyed pastor's simple, fervent call;
Those deeper wake the heart, where heart is all in all.
XLII.
Vain the world's grandeur to that hallow'd roof
Where sate our fathers many a gentle year;
All round us memory; at our feet the proof,
How deep the grave holds all we treasure here:
Nay, where we bend, still trembling on our ear
The voice whose parting rent life's loveliest ties;
And who demands us all, heart, thought, tear, prayer?
Ev'n H E who saith “Mercy, not sacrifice,”
Cares H E for mortal pomp, whose footstool is the skies!
XLIII.
If pride be evil;—if the holiest sighs
Must come from humblest hearts, if man must turn
Full on his wreck of nature, to be wise;—
If there be blessedness for those who mourn;—
What speak the purple gauds that round us burn?
Ask of that kneeling crowd whose glances stray
So restless round on altar, vestment, urn;
Can guilt weep there? can mild repentance pray?
Ask, when this moment's past, how runs their sabbath day!
XLIV.
Their sabbath day! Alas! to France that day
Comes not; she has a day of looser dress,
A day of thicker crowded ball and play,
A day of folly's hotter, ranker press;
She knoweth not its hallowed happiness,
Its eve of gather'd hearts and gentle cheer.
Paris! how many an outcast might confess
Her first temptation in its guilty glare!
What saith yon sullen Morgue?—go, seek the victim there.
XLV.
'Tis open!—Never fails its sight of woe!
And crowds are rushing to that fearful dome,
And crowds are scattering out, subdued and slow;
They've seen,—to what complexion life may come.
'Tis narrow as the grave, a house of gloom:
And on the wall, with ouze and blood long dyed,
Are hung a spangled robe, a broken plume,
Dropping, as fresh-drawn from the river tide,
And cold beneath them lies—the lost!—the suicide!
XLVI.
A few rude boards are now her beauty's bed;
Her still and roseless cheek has now no veil
But one long, dripping lock across it shed;
Yet her wide eye looks living. Oh! the tale
Told there—of reason that began to fail,
Of wild remorse, of the last agony,
When wandering, desperate, in the midnight gale,
She flung to sightless heaven her parting cry,
Then in the dark wave plunged, to struggle and to die.
XLVII.
The crowd pass on. The hurried, trembling look,
That dreaded to have seen some dear one there,
Soon glanced, they silent pass. But in yon nook,
Who kneels, deep shrinking from the oriel's glare,
Her forehead veil'd, her lip in quivering prayer,
Her raised hands with the unfelt rosary wound?
That shrouded,—silent—statue of despair
Is she who through the world's delusive round
Had sought her erring child, and found, and there had found!
Pompous!—but love I not such pomp of prayer;
Ill bends the heart 'mid mortal luxury.
Rather let me the meek devotion share,
Where, in their silent glens and thickets high,
England, thy lone and lowly chapels lie.
The spotless table by the eastern wall,
The marble, rudely traced with names gone by,
The pale-eyed pastor's simple, fervent call;
Those deeper wake the heart, where heart is all in all.
XLII.
Vain the world's grandeur to that hallow'd roof
Where sate our fathers many a gentle year;
All round us memory; at our feet the proof,
How deep the grave holds all we treasure here:
Nay, where we bend, still trembling on our ear
The voice whose parting rent life's loveliest ties;
And who demands us all, heart, thought, tear, prayer?
Ev'n H E who saith “Mercy, not sacrifice,”
Cares H E for mortal pomp, whose footstool is the skies!
XLIII.
If pride be evil;—if the holiest sighs
Must come from humblest hearts, if man must turn
Full on his wreck of nature, to be wise;—
If there be blessedness for those who mourn;—
What speak the purple gauds that round us burn?
Ask of that kneeling crowd whose glances stray
So restless round on altar, vestment, urn;
Can guilt weep there? can mild repentance pray?
Ask, when this moment's past, how runs their sabbath day!
XLIV.
Their sabbath day! Alas! to France that day
Comes not; she has a day of looser dress,
A day of thicker crowded ball and play,
A day of folly's hotter, ranker press;
She knoweth not its hallowed happiness,
Its eve of gather'd hearts and gentle cheer.
Paris! how many an outcast might confess
Her first temptation in its guilty glare!
What saith yon sullen Morgue?—go, seek the victim there.
XLV.
'Tis open!—Never fails its sight of woe!
And crowds are rushing to that fearful dome,
And crowds are scattering out, subdued and slow;
They've seen,—to what complexion life may come.
'Tis narrow as the grave, a house of gloom:
And on the wall, with ouze and blood long dyed,
Are hung a spangled robe, a broken plume,
Dropping, as fresh-drawn from the river tide,
And cold beneath them lies—the lost!—the suicide!
XLVI.
A few rude boards are now her beauty's bed;
Her still and roseless cheek has now no veil
But one long, dripping lock across it shed;
Yet her wide eye looks living. Oh! the tale
Told there—of reason that began to fail,
Of wild remorse, of the last agony,
When wandering, desperate, in the midnight gale,
She flung to sightless heaven her parting cry,
Then in the dark wave plunged, to struggle and to die.
XLVII.
The crowd pass on. The hurried, trembling look,
That dreaded to have seen some dear one there,
Soon glanced, they silent pass. But in yon nook,
Who kneels, deep shrinking from the oriel's glare,
Her forehead veil'd, her lip in quivering prayer,
Her raised hands with the unfelt rosary wound?
That shrouded,—silent—statue of despair
Is she who through the world's delusive round
Had sought her erring child, and found, and there had found!
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