THE GARDENS OF THE VATICAN
And mosses green, and tremulous veils of fern,
And banks of blowing cyclamen, and stars,
Blue as the skies, of myrtle blossoming,
The twilight shade of ilex overhead
O'erbubbling with sweet song of nightingale,
With walks of strange, weird stillness, leading on
'Mid sculptured fragments half to green moss gone,
Or breaking forth amid the violet leaves
With some white gleam of an old world gone by.
Ah! strange, sweet quiet! wilderness of calm,
Gardens of dreamy rest, I long to lay
Beneath your shade the last long sigh, and say,
Here is my home, my Lord, thy home and mine;
And I, having searched the world with many a tear,
At last have found thee and will stray no more.
But vainly here I seek the Gardener
That Mary saw. These lovely halls beyond,
That airy, sky-like dome, that lofty fane,
Is as a palace whence the king is gone
And taken all the sweetness with himself.
Turn again, Jesus, and possess thine own!
Come to thy temple once more as of old!
Drive forth the money-changers, let it be
A house of prayer for nations. Even so,
Amen! Amen!
ST. PETER'S CHURCH
HOLY WEEK, APRIL, 1860
Harmonious! hospitable! with thine arms
Outspread to all, thy fountains ever full,
And, fair as heaven, thy misty, sky-like dome
Hung like the firmament with circling sweep
Above the constellated golden lamps
That burn forever round the holy tomb.
Most meet art thou to be the Father's house,
The house of prayer for nations. Come the time
When thou shalt be so! when a liberty,
Wide as thine arms, high as thy lofty dome,
Shall be proclaimed, by thy loud singing choirs,
Like voice of many waters! Then the Lord
Shall come into his temple, and make pure
The sons of Levi; then, as once of old,
The blind shall see, the lame leap as an hart,
And to the poor the Gospel shall be preached,
And Easter's silver-sounding trumpets tell,
"The Lord is risen indeed," to die no more.
Hasten it in its time. Amen! Amen!
THE MISERERE
Vanish the pictured walls! and, one by one,
The starry candles silently expire!
A moment's pause, a hush as of the grave.
Now rises slow a silver mist of sound,
And all the heavens break out in drops of grief;
A rain of sobbing sweetness, swelling, dying,
Voice into voice inweaving with sweet throbs,
And fluttering pulses of impassioned moan,—
Veiled voices, in whose wailing there is awe,
And mysteries of love and agony,
A yearning anguish of celestial souls,
A shiver as of wings trembling the air,
As if God's shining doves, his spotless birds,
Wailed with a nightingale's heart-break of grief,
In this their starless night, when for our sins
Their sun, their life, their love, hangs darkly there,
Like a slain lamb, bleeding his life away!
FOOTNOTES:
[2] M. Lenormant says in The Magic of the Chaldees: "The more one advances in the understanding of the cuneiform text, the more one sees the necessity of revising the condemnation too prematurely uttered against the Book of Daniel by the German Exegetical School. Without doubt, the use of certain Greek words serves to show that it has passed through the hands of some editor since the time of Alexander. But the substance of it is much more ancient—is imprinted with a perfectly distinct Babylonian tinge, and the picture of life in the court of Nabuchodonosor and his successors has an equal truthfulness which could not have been attained at a later period."
[3] Lightfoot, in his notes on Luke iii., maintains this theory, and quotes in support of it three passages from the Jerusalem Talmud, folio 77, 4, where Mary the mother of Jesus is denounced as the daughter of Heli, and mother of a pretender. The same view is sustained by Paulus, Spanheim, and Lange.
[4] These passages are quoted and commented on by Hilgenfeld on the Apocalyptic Literature of the Hebrews, and Lücke on the Apocalypse of St. John.
[5] See 2 Chronicles xxiv. 20, 21.
"And the spirit of the Lord came upon Zechariah, the son of Jehoida the priest, who stood among the people, and said, Why transgress ye the commandments of the Lord, that ye cannot prosper? Because ye have forsaken the Lord he also hath forsaken you. And they conspired against him and stoned him with stones in the court of the house of the Lord."
These two instances, of Abel and Zacharias, cited by our Lord from the very first and very last of the sacred historic books, seemed to cover the whole ground of their history. The variation as to the name of the prophet's father has many theories to account for it, any one of which is satisfactory.
[6] According to this legend, Catherine was a noble maiden of Alexandria, distinguished alike by birth, riches, beauty, and the rarest gifts of genius and learning. In the flower of her life she consecrated herself to the service of her Redeemer, and cheerfully suffered for his sake the loss of wealth, friends, and the esteem of the world. Banishment, imprisonment, and torture were in vain tried to shake the constancy of her faith; and at last she was bound upon the torturing-wheel for a cruel death. But the angels descended, so says the story, rent the wheel, and bore her away, through the air, far over the sea, to Mount Sinai, where her body was left to repose, and her soul ascended with them to heaven.