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THE FOREST SANCTUARY.
43


LXXX.

Not midst those aisles, through which a thousand years
Mutely as clouds and reverently had swept;
Not by those shrines, which yet the trace of tears
And kneeling votaries on their marble kept!
Ye were too mighty in your pomp of gloom
And trophied age, O temple, altar, tomb!
And you, ye dead!—for in that faith ye slept,
Whose weight had grown a mountain's on my heart,

Which could not there be loos’d.—I turn'd me to depart.


LXXXI.

I turn'd—what glimmer'd faintly on my sight,
Faintly, yet brightening, as a wreath of snow
Seen through dissolving haze?—The moon, the night,
Had waned, and dawn pour'd in;—grey, shadowy, slow,
Yet day-spring still!—a solemn hue it caught,
Piercing the storied windows, darkly fraught
With stoles and draperies of imperial glow;
And soft, and sad, that colouring gleam was thrown,

Where, pale, a pictur'd form above the altar shone.
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