AT THE CHURCH-DOOR.
The city lights still glimmered in the square,
Shivered with morning’s chill the winter air,
Scarce yet the eastern line of light broke through
The starlit darkness of the deep skies’ blue.
Upon the sparkling snow clear shadows lay
The moon flung eastward,—as if so the day,
Whose unseen coming seemed to fill the air,
They yearning sought with outstretched arms of prayer.
A sound of bells from far-off towers broke,
The frosty silence with their pealing woke,
And answering bells flung back across the sky
The Christmas morning’s glad, earth-echoed cry.
Dark, muffled figures with quick, constant tread
O’er glittering ice and snowy pathway sped—
A gathering train, crowding from lane and street,
To lay love’s homage at the Child-Christ’s feet.
A soft gleam from the church’s windows fell
Across the square, as if in peace to tell
Of light less clouded shining pure within,
Of peace more eloquent cleansed souls should win.
As, with the thronging crowd, my feet drew near
The open doorway whence the light streamed clear,
The accents of a language not my own
Broke through the hurrying footsteps’ monotone—
Quick-spoken words of soft Italian speech:
So far the simple utterance seemed to reach,
To Roman skies my dreaming thoughts it bore,
While home’s familiar walls new aspect wore.
Seemed it almost, beneath that dark of dawn,
As if my feet fell Roman pavement on,
The lights that twinkled through the open door
Burning some altar, centuries old, before,
Whose glow, in truth, fell soft on northern fir
O’er whose dark shadow shone the face of her,
The lowly Mother-Maid, Lady of Grace,
Foligno’s Queen watching the holy place.
And shrined within lay martyr-saint of Rome—
Vial and bones from ancient catacomb
Of that far city that seemed far no more,
Whose faith and speech met at the low church-door.
Seeming that speech true witness of the peace
Won years ago, when weary earth’s release
The angels chanted in the midnight sky,
And earth’s Redeemer waked with infant cry:
He who had come the narrow bonds to break
Of race and nation, who frail flesh did take
That Jew and Gentile might one Father claim,
And win all sweetness through one Brother’s name.
Scarce foreign seemed the stranger’s vivid word;
Nay, rather was it as if so I heard
The Christian speech of some old saintly age
Claiming in faith an earlier heritage.
Before one altar soon our knees should bend,
In one heart’s-worship soon our prayers ascend,
Within those sacred walls—our common home—
As children kneel of one true mother—Rome.
One faith was ours, one country all our own,
Wherein all petty landmarks are o’erthrown:
Not worshipping as Latin, Saxon, Gaul—
The children of one God who made us all.
Ours an inheritance so full and great,
Each lowliest handmaid clothed in royal state;
No heart so poor but that it throne may be
For Heaven’s King in his infinity.
From Rome this guerdon of our faith we hold:
What though its light o’er broken seas is rolled?
Unfaltering it shines through storm-clouds’ shade,
Unfailing beacon! by God’s Spirit fed.
A foreign faith! Ay, so, of that strange land
Whereof as citizens our free souls stand,
Whose earthly pasture is the church’s shrine—
Earth’s limits lost within her realm divine.