"Ad Nives."
XIV.
Before the morn began to break
The bright One bent above that pair
Whose childless vows aspired to take
The mother of their Lord for heir.
'Twas August: even in midnight shade
The roofs were hot, and hot the street:—
"Build me a fane," the vision said,
"Where first your eyes the snow shall meet." [Footnote 6]
[Footnote 6: Santa Maria Maggiore, on
the Esquiline, at Rome.]
With snow the Esquiline was strewn
At morn!—Fair Legend! who but thinks
Of thee, when first the breezes blown
From summer Alp to Alp he drinks?
He stands: he hears the torrents dash:
Slowly the vapours break; and lo!
Through chasms of endless azure flash
The peaks of everlasting snow.
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He stands; he listens; on his ear
Swells softly forth some virgin hymn:
The white procession windeth near,
With glimmering lights in sunshine dim.
Mother of Purity and Peace!
They sing the Saviour's name and thine
Clothe them for ever with the fleece
Unspotted of thy Lamb Divine!
Fest. Puritatis.
XV.
Far down the bird may sing of love;
The honey-bearing blossom blow:
But hail, ye hills that rise above
The limit of perpetual snow!
O Alpine City, with thy walls
Of rock eterne and spires of ice,
Where torrent still to torrent calls,
And precipice to precipice;—
How like that holier City thou,
The heavenly Salem's earthly porch,
Which rears among the stars her brow,
And plants firm feet on earth—the Church!
"Decaying, ne'er to be decayed,"
Her woods, like thine, renew their youth:
Her streams, in rocky arms embayed,
Are clear as virtue, strong as truth.
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At times the lake may burst its dam;
Black pine and rock the valley strew;
But o'er the ruin soon the lamb
Its flowery pasture crops anew.
She, too, in regions near the sky
Up-piles her cloistered snows, and thence
Diffuses gales of purity
O'er fields of consecrated sense.
On those still heights a love-light glows
The plains from them alone receive;—
Not all the Lily! There thy Rose,
O Mary, triumphs, morn and eve!
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XVI.
Cloud-piercing Mountains! Chance and Change
More high than you their thrones advance.
Self-vanquished Nature's rockiest range
Gives way before them like the trance
Of one that wakes. From morn to eve
Through fissured clefts her mists make way;
At Night's cold touch they freeze, and cleave
Her crags; and, with a Titan's sway,
Flake off and peel the rotting rocks,
And heap the glacier tide below
With isles of sand and floating blocks,
As leaves on streams when tempests blow.
Lo, thus the great decree all-just,
O Earth, thy mountains hear; and learn
From fire and frost its import—"dust
Thou art; and shalt to dust return."
He only is Who ever was;
The All-measuring Mind; the Will Supreme.
Rocks, mountains, worlds, like bubbles pass:
God is; the things not God but seem.
Foederis Arca.
XVII.
From end to end, O God, Thy Will
With swift yet ordered might doth reach:
Thy purposes their scope fulfil
In sequence, resting each on each.
In Thee is nothing sudden; nought
From harmony and law that swerves:
The orbits of Thine act and thought
In soft succession wind their curves.
O then with what a gradual care
Must thou have shaped that sacred shrine,
That Ark of grace, ordained to bear
The burthen of the Babe divine!
How many a gift within her breast
Lay stored, for Him a couch to strew!
How many a virtue lined His nest!
How many a grace beside Him grew!
Of love on love what sweet excess!
How deep a faith! a hope how high!—
Mary! on earth of thee we guess;
But we shall see thee when we die!