XVI
ROCHER-ST.-POL
La Grande Rue and La Place de la République
We found much needed restoration in the hors-d'œuvres, the omelette, the cutlet, the salads and the cheese of déjeuner,—and then followed coffee under the awning of the café. Here we looked out on the Grand Place which had now become sleepy, all signs of the market and its business having disappeared. On it front the Mairie, the Bureau des Postes, the Hôtel du Lion d'Or and various centres of local commerce. We watched our neighbors in the café; the colonel with clanking sword in vigorous discussion with a local magnate; the retired bourgeois who played a desultory game of billiards or a deeply thought out match at dominoes. A quiet square it was now, and, in the shade of its plane trees, comfortable and at peace with the world, we fell asleep and made up for the wakefulness of our earlier hours.
Roberts, Letters from France.
OUR LADY OF THE ROCKS
High throned above th' encircling meadows fair
Our Lady of the Rocks holds queenly sway!
Bright kerchiefed peasants daily wend their way
With clattering sabots up the winding stair,
Pausing at each rude rock-hewn station, there
To bend the knee and many an Ave say.
Up, up they climb, their voices echoing gay
Till by the Virgin's shrine they kneel in prayer.
This is that "Jacob's Ladder" famed afar
To which the Kings of France made pilgrimage
Asking for favors both in Peace and War.
Well named!—for Heavenwards the way is tending,
And all these happy, pious folk presage
Angels of God ascending and descending.
H. L. P.
But, when so sad thou canst no sadder,
Cry, and upon thy so sore loss
Shall shine the traffic of Jacob's ladder
Pitched between heaven and Charing Cross.
So in the night my soul, my daughter,
Cry, clinging heaven by the hems,
And lo! Christ walking on the water
Not of Gennesaret but Thames.
Francis Thompson.