The poem itself shows considerable skill in construction and deftness in the moulding of the sentences, moreover, there is a freshness in the treatment of the theme that a less original writer would have found great difficulty in imparting. Here again we see the Catholic note as when he writes—
"Never mightest thou see
The face of Her, before whose mouldering shrine
To-day at Rome the silent nations kneel;
Who got from Love no joyous gladdening,
But only Love's intolerable pain,
Only a sword to pierce her heart in twain,
Only the bitterness of child-bearing."
There is one especially fine bit of imagery—
"The lotus-leaves which heal the wounds of death
Lie in thy hand—"
which bears the very truest imprint of poetry.
With the poet's return to England, a reaction took place, and the sight of English woodlands and English lanes caused a strong revulsion of feeling.
"This English Thames is holier far than Rome
Those harebells like a sudden flush of sea
Breaking across the woodland, with the foam
Of meadow-sweet and white anemone,
To fleck their blue waves,—God is likelier there
Than hidden in that crystal-hearted star the pale monks bear."
The green fields and the smell of the good brown earth come as a refreshing contrast to the incense laden atmosphere of foreign cathedrals. And yet his fancy delights in commingling the two. In the "violet-gleaming" butterflies he finds Roman Monsignore (he anglicises the word by the way and gives it a plural "s,"), a lazy pike is "some mitred old Bishop in partibis," and "The wind, the restless prisoner of the trees, does well for Palestrina."
He revels in the contrast that the refreshing simplicity of rural England presents to the pomp and splendour of Rome. The "lingering orange afterglow" is "more fair than all Rome's lordliest pageants." The "blue-green beanfields" "tremulous with the last shower" bring sweeter perfume at eventide than "the odorous flame-jewelled censers the young deacons swing." Bird life suggests the conceit that—
"Poor Fra Giovanni bawling at the Mass,
Were out of tune now for a small brown bird
Sings overhead."