Editorial note — Notre Dame De Garaison.
Reading edition
[Footnote 187: In the absence of a suitable poetic version of the above, we subjoin—for such of our readers as are not familiar with the language of the original—the following prose translation of it, from Digby's Ages of Faith: "Pale lamp of the Sanctuary, why, in the obscurity of the Holy Place, unperceived and solitary, consumest thou thyself before God? It is not, feeble spark! to give light to the eye of him who made the day: it is not to dispel darkness from the steps of his adorers. The vast nave is only more obscure before thy distant glimmering. And yet, symbolic lamp, thou guardest thy immortal fire, thou dost flicker before every altar, and mine eyes love to rest suspended on this aerial hearth. I say to them, I comprehend not; ye pious flames, ye do well. Perhaps these bright particles of the immense creation imitate before his throne the eternal adoration! It is thus, say I to my soul, that, in the shade of this lower place, thou burnest, a flame invisible, a fire which remains unextinguished, unconsumed, by which incense can be at all times rekindled to ascend in fragrance to heaven!"]