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
Would I that cowled churchman be
Why should the vest on him alure
Which I could not on me endure?
Not from a vain or shallow thought
His awful Jove young Phidias brought;
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
Like the volcano's tongue of flame
Up from the burning core below
The canticles of love and woe;
The hand that rounded Peter's dome
And groined the aisles of Christian Rome
Wrought in a sad sincerity;
Himself from God he could not free;
He builded better than he knew;
The conscious stone to beauty grew
Know'st thou what wove yon woodbird's nest
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?
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 hast her lids
To gaze upon the Pyramids;
O'er england's abbeys bends the sky
As on its friends, with kindred eye;
For, out of Thought's interior sphere
These wonders rose to upper air;
And nature gladly gave them place
Adopted them into her race
And granted them an equal date
With Andes and with Ararat
These temples grew as grows the gra**;
Art might obey, but not surpa**
The pa**ive master lent his hand
To the vast soul that o'er him planned;
And the same power that reared the shrine
Bestrode the stibes that knelt within
Ever the fiery Pntecost
Girds with one flame the countless host
Trances the heart through chanting choirs
And through the priest the mind inspired
The word unto the prophet spoken
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
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
And he who blent both in his line
The younger Golden Lips or mines
Taylor, the Shakspeare of divines
His words are music in my ear
I see his cowled portrait dear;
And yet, for all his faith could see
I would not the good bishop be