only, charioted the songstress on,
Like those that serve the May. Beneath a tree
Low-roofed at last she sank, with eyes up-raised
On boughs that, ivy-twined and creeper-trailed,
Darkened the shining splendour of the sky:--
Between their interspaces, here and there,
It flashed in purple stars.
Enraptured long,
For admiration was to her as love,
The maiden raised at last her mother's book,
And lit upon her childhood's favourite tale,
Catherine in vision wed to Bethlehem's Babe
Who from His Virgin-Mother leaning, dropped
His ring adown her finger. Princely pride,
And pride not less of soaring intellect,
At once in her were changed to pride of love:
In vain her country's princes sued her grace;
Kingdoms of earth she spurned. Around her seat
The far-famed Alexandrian Sages thronged,
Branding her Faith as novel. Slight and tall,
'Mid them, keen-eyed the wingless creature stood
Like daughter of the sun on earth new-lit:--
That Faith she shewed of all things first and last;
All lesser truths its prophets. Swift as beams
Forth flashed such shafts of high intelligence
That straight their lore sophistic shrivelled up,
And Christians they arose. The martyr's wheel
Was pictured in the margin, dyed with red,
And likewise, azure-tinct on golden ground,
Her queenly throne in heaven. 'Ah shining Saint!'
Half weeping, smiling half, the virgin cried;
'Yet dear not less thy sister of the West;
For never gaze I on that lifted face,
Or mark that sailing angel near her stayed,
But straight her solemn organs round me swell;
All discords cease.' Then with low voice she read
Of Rome's Cecilia, her who won to Christ,
(That earlier troth inviolably preserved)
Her Roman bridegroom, wondering at that crown
Invisible itself, that round her breathed
Rose-breath celestial; her that to the Church
Gave her ancestral house; and, happier gift,
Devotion's heavenliest instrument of praise;
Her that, unfearing, dared that Roman sword;
And when its work was done, for centuries lay
Like marble, 'mid the catacombs, unchanged,
In sleep-resembling death.
From earliest dawn
That maiden's eyes had watched: wearied at noon
Their silver curtains closed. Huge mossy roots
Pillowed her head, that slender b