Immortal spirits meet above;
But mine is still the human heart;
And in its faithful human love,
It mourns that dust should part!
THE POPE AND THE BEGGAR.
THE DESIRES THE CHAINS, THE DEEDS THE WINGS.
I saw a soul beside the clay it wore,
When reign'd that clay the Hierarch-Sire of Rome;
A hundred priests stood ranged the bier before,
Within St. Peter's dome.
And all was incense, solemn dirge, and prayer,
And still the soul stood sullen by the clay:
"O soul, why to thy heavenlier native air
Dost thou not soar away?"
And the soul answer'd, with a ghastly frown,
"In what life loved, death finds its weal or woe;
Slave to the clay's Desires, they drag me down
To the clay's rot below!"
It spoke, and where Rome's purple ones reposed,
They lower'd the corpse; and downwards from the sun
Both soul and body sunk—and darkness closed
Over that twofold one!
Without the church, unburied on the ground,
There lay, in rags, a beggar newly dead;
Above the dust no holy priest was found,
No pious prayer was said!
But round the corpse unnumber'd lovely things,
Hovering unseen by the proud passers by,
Form'd, upward, upward, upward, with bright wings,
A ladder to the sky!