Here underneath these venerable oaks, Wrinkled and brown and gnarled like them with age, A brother of the monastery sits, Lost in his meditations. What may be The questions that perplex, the hopes that cheer him? Good-evening, holy father.
MONK.
God be with you.
MICHAEL ANGELO. Pardon a stranger if he interrupt Your meditations.
MONK.
It was but a dream,—
The old, old dream, that never will come true;
The dream that all my life I have been dreaming,
And yet is still a dream.
MICHAEL ANGELO.
All men have dreams:
I have had mine; but none of them came true;
They were but vanity. Sometimes I think
The happiness of man lies in pursuing,
Not in possessing; for the things possessed
Lose half their value. Tell me of your dream.
MONK. The yearning of my heart, my sole desire, That like the sheaf of Joseph stands up right, While all the others bend and bow to it; The passion that torments me, and that breathes New meaning into the dead forms of prayer, Is that with mortal eyes I may behold The Eternal City.
MICHAEL ANGELO.
Rome?
MONK.
There is but one;
The rest are merely names. I think of it
As the Celestial City, paved with gold,
And sentinelled with angels.
MICHAEL ANGELO.
Would it were.
I have just fled from it. It is beleaguered
By Spanish troops, led by the Duke of Alva.
MONK. But still for me 't is the Celestial City, And I would see it once before I die.