The Saint's Tragedy. Charles Kingsley

      Wal.  And walk into the bog beneath your feet.

      Con.  And change it to firm land by magic step!

      Build there cloud-cleaving spires, beneath whose shade

      Great cities rise for vassals; to call forth

      From plough and loom the rank unlettered hinds,

      And make them saints and heroes—send them forth

      To sway with heavenly craft the spirit of princes;

      Change nations’ destinies, and conquer worlds

      With love, more mighty than the sword; what, Count?

      Art thou ambitious? practical? we monks

      Can teach you somewhat there too.

      Lewis.  Be it so;

      But love you have forsworn; and what were life

      Without that chivalry, which bends man’s knees

      Before God’s image and his glory, best

      Revealed in woman’s beauty?

      Con.  Ah! poor worldlings!

      Little you dream what maddening ecstasies,

      What rich ideals haunt, by day and night,

      Alone, and in the crowd, even to the death,

      The servitors of that celestial court

      Where peerless Mary, sun-enthroned, reigns,

      In whom all Eden dreams of womanhood,

      All grace of form, hue, sound, all beauty strewn

      Like pearls unstrung, about this ruined world,

      Have their fulfilment and their archetype.

      Why hath the rose its scent, the lily grace?

      To mirror forth her loveliness, from whom,

      Primeval fount of grace, their livery came:

      Pattern of Seraphs! only worthy ark

      To bear her God athwart the floods of time!

      Lewis.  Who dare aspire to her?  Alas, not I!

      To me she is a doctrine, and a picture:—

      I cannot live on dreams.

      Con.  She hath her train:—

      There thou may’st choose thy love: If world-wide lore

      Shall please thee, and the Cherub’s glance of fire,

      Let Catharine lift thy soul, and rapt with her

      Question the mighty dead, until thou float

      Tranced on the ethereal ocean of her spirit.

      If pity father passion in thee, hang

      Above Eulalia’s tortured loveliness;

      And for her sake, and in her strength, go forth

      To do and suffer greatly.  Dost thou long

      For some rich heart, as deep in love as weakness,

      Whose wild simplicity sweet heaven-born instincts

      Alone keep sane?

      Lewis.  I do, I do.  I’d live

      And die for each and all the three.

      Con.  Then go—

      Entangled in the Magdalen’s tresses lie;

      Dream hours before her picture, till thy lips

      Dare to approach her feet, and thou shalt start

      To find the canvas warm with life, and matter

      A moment transubstantiate to heaven.

      Wal.  Ay, catch his fever, Sir, and learn to take

      An indigestion for a troop of angels.

      Come, tell him, monk, about your magic gardens,

      Where not a stringy head of kale is cut

      But breeds a vision or a revelation.