2d Monk. Most splendid all, no doubt?
Ger. A garden, sir,
Wherein all rainbowed flowers were heaped together;
A sea of silk and gold, of blazoned banners,
And chargers housed; such glorious press, be sure,
Thuringen-land ne’er saw.
2d Monk. Just hear the boy!
Who rode beside the bier?
Ger. Frederic the Kaiser,
Henry the Landgrave, brother of her husband;
The Princesses, too, Agnes, and her mother;
And every noble name, sir, at whose war-cry
The Saxon heart leaps up; with them the prelates
Of Treves, of Cöln, and Maintz—why name them all?
When all were there, whom this our fatherland
Counts worthy of its love.
1st Monk. ’Twas but her right.
Who spoke the oration?
Ger. Who but Conrad?
2d Monk. Well—
That’s honour to our house.
1st Monk. Come, tell us all.
2d Monk. In order, boy: thou hast a ready tongue.
Ger. He raised from off her face the pall, and ‘Lo!’
He cried, ‘that saintly flesh which ye of late
With sacrilegious hands, ere yet entombed,
Had in your superstitious selfishness
Almost torn piecemeal. Fools! Gross-hearted fools!
These limbs are God’s, not yours: in life for you
They spent themselves; now till the judgment-day
By virtue of the Spirit embalmed they lie—
Touch them who dare. No! Would you find your Saint,
Look up, not down, where even now she prays
Beyond that blazing orb for you and me.
Why hither bring her corpse? Why hide her clay
In jewelled ark beneath God’s mercy-seat—
A speck of dust among these boundless aisles,
Uprushing pillars, star-bespangled roofs,
Whose colours mimic Heaven’s unmeasured blue,
Save to remind you, how she is not here,
But risen with Him that rose, and by His blaze
Absorbed, lives in the God for whom she died?
Know her no more according to the flesh;
Or only so, to brand upon your thoughts
How she was once a woman—flesh and blood,
Like you—yet how unlike! Hark while I tell ye.’