XVIII THE TOMB OF ST. AUGUSTINE AT PAVIA
Reading edition
Beneath the low barbaric Lombard apse It rises like a ridge of Alpine snow, And wry-wheeled ages with uneasy lapse Creak past its majesty, and go.
Such music as leaves Milan’s marble spires To mount towards a greater whiter throne, Or tempts to earth again seraphic choirs, Is at Augustine’s shrine unknown.
No wave of pilgrim footsteps surges here, No sheaf of tapers lifts its votive gleam, The half-taught critic comes not with his sneer, When I draw nigh, dear saint, to dream.
Enough if far-off sounds of children’s glee Bid me to “take and read” God’s open call, Or some sad Monnica pray here to see Her son, like thee, a second Paul.