III. 2.
Lo, steel-clad War his gorgeous standard rears!
The red-cross squadrons madly rage,[[19]]
And mow thro’ infancy and age:
Then kiss the sacred dust and melt in tears.
Veiling from the eye of day,
Penance dreams her life away;
In cloister’d solitude she sits and sighs,
While from each shrine still, small responses rise.
Hear, with what heart-felt beat, the midnight bell
Swings its slow summons thro’ the hollow pile!
The weak, wan votarist leaves her twilight cell,
To walk, with taper dim, the winding isle;
With choral chantings vainly to aspire,
Beyond this nether sphere, on Rapture’s wing of fire.