The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 08, No. 45, July, 1861 / A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics

E-text prepared by Joshua Hutchinson, Tonya Allen, and Project Gutenberg
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Weave no more silks, ye Lyons looms, To deck our girls for gay delights! The crimson flower of battle blooms, And solemn marches fill the nights.
Weave but the flag whose bars to-day Drooped heavy o'er our early dead, And homely garments, coarse and gray, For orphans that must earn their bread!
Keep back your tunes, ye viols sweet, That pour delight from other lands! Rouse there the dancer's restless feet,— The trumpet leads our warrior bands.
And ye that wage the war of words With mystic fame and subtle power, Go, chatter to the idle birds, Or teach the lesson of the hour!
Ye Sibyl Arts, in one stern knot Be all your offices combined! Stand close, while Courage draws the lot, The destiny of humankind!
And if that destiny could fail, The sun should darken in the sky, The eternal bloom of Nature pale, And God, and Truth, and Freedom die!
The Mother Theresa sat in a sort of withdrawing-room, the roof of which rose in arches, starred with blue and gold like that of the cloister, and the sides were frescoed with scenes from the life of the Virgin. Over every door, and in convenient places between the paintings, tests of Holy Writ were illuminated in blue and scarlet and gold, with a richness and fancifulness of outline, as if every sacred letter had blossomed into a mystical flower. The Abbess herself, with two of her nuns, was busily embroidering a new altar-cloth, with a lavish profusion of adornment; and, from time to time, their voices rose in the musical tones of an ancient Latin hymn. The words were full of that quaint and mystical pietism with which the fashion of the times clothed the expression of devotional feeling:—
Jesu, corona virginum, Quem mater illa concepit, Quae sola virgo parturit, Haec vota clemens accipe.
Qui pascis inter lilia Septus choreis virginum, Sponsus decoris gloria Sponsisque reddens praemia.