Even its own faithless guardians strove to

slake,

In fogs of earth, the pure ethereal flame;
And priestly hands, for Jesus' blessed sake,
Were red with blood, and charity became,
In that stern war of forms, a mockery and a

name.

XX.

They triumphed, and less bloody rites were kept Within the quiet of the convent cell;

The well-fed inmates pattered prayer, and slept, And sinned, and liked their easy penance well. Where pleasant was the spot for men to dwell, Amid its fair broad lands the abbey lay,

Sheltering dark orgies that were shame to tell, And cowled and barefoot beggars swarmed the

way,

All in their convent weeds, of black, and white,

and gray.

XXI.

Oh, sweetly the returning muses' strain Swelled over that famed stream, whose gentle tide

In their bright lap the Etrurian vales detain, Sweet, as when winter storms have ceased to chide,

And all the new-leaved woods, resounding wide,
Send out wild hymns upon the scented air.
Lo! to the smiling Arno's classic side

The emulous nations of the west repair,

And kindle their quenched urns, and drink

fresh spirit there.

XXII.

Still, Heaven deferred the hour ordained to

rend

From saintly rottenness the sacred stole ;

And cowl and worshipped shrine could still

defend

The wretch with felon stains upon his soul; And crimes were set to sale, and hard his dole Who could not bribe a passage to the skies; And vice, beneath the mitre's kind control, Sinned gaily on, and grew to giant size, Shielded by priestly power, and watched by priestly eyes.

XXIII.

At last the earthquake came-the shock, that hurled

To dust, in many fragments dashed and strown, The throne, whose roots were in another world, And whose far-stretching shadow awed our own. From many a proud monastic pile, o'erthrown, Fear-struck, the hooded inmates rushed and fled; The web, that for a thousand years had grown O'er prostrate Europe, in that day of dread Crumbled and fell, as fire dissolves the flaxen

thread.

XXIV.

The spirit of that day is still awake,

And spreads himself, and shall not sleep again; But through the idle mesh of power shall break Like billows o'er the Asian monarch's chain; Till men are filled with him, and feel how vain, Instead of the pure heart and innocent hands, Are all the proud and pompous modes to gain The smile of heaven;-till a new age expands Its white and holy wings above the peaceful lands.

XXV.

For look again on the past years ;—behold, How like the nightmare's dreams have flown

away

Horrible forms of worship, that, of old,

Held o'er the shuddering realms, unquestioned

sway:

See crimes, that feared not once the eye of day,

Rooted from men, without a name or place;
See nations blotted out from earth, to pay
The forfeit of deep guilt ;—with glad embrace
The fair disburdened lands welcome a nobler

race.

XXVI.

Thus error's monstrous shapes from earth are

driven;

They fade, they fly, but truth survives their

flight;

Earth has no shades to quench that beam of heaven;

Each ray that shone, in early time, to light The faltering footstep in the path of right, Each gleam of clearer brightness shed to aid In man's maturer day his bolder sight,

All blended, like the rainbow's radiant braid, Pour yet, and still shall pour, the blaze that cannot fade.