RELICS. BY J. U. U.

Ay, there are glorious things even in the dust Which still must ever from the human heart Win homage next devotion. ’Tis in vain To ask the wherefore, or demand what are they Amid the keen realities of life? Old coin, or broken casque, or fretted stone— The waste of Time—the rack upon life’s shore Thrown up by the spent waves of centuries— They have no meaning in the vulgar tongue; Their very uses know them not—things past Into the chaos of forgotten forms. But here the root of this deep error lies. The world’s deep Lethé onward blindly glides, A perishable Present! glorious only Because no Future and no Past are seen To scare or shame its dreamy voyager. In dull forgetfulness the error lies, That hath no feeling of the mighty Past Espoused to sense, and purblind as the mole To all that meets the intellectual eye: To such Iona is a heap of stones, And Marathon a desert … … O, how changed! The meanest thing on which great Time hath set His awful stamp (the long-surviving thought Left by the mind of other days) appears To knowledge and the gaze of memory, More instantaneous than those words of power Which ancient legends say the tomb obeyed— The broken pillar, and the moss-grown pile, Dilate into antique magnificence: At once the stern old rampart crowns its height— The donjon keep, the tower of ancient pride, The rock-built fortress of old robber kings, Start into life, and from their portals pour Mailed foray forth, or pomp of feudal war. The temple swells from vacancy, o’erarching With pillared roof, and dim solemnity, The worship of old time. The dry bones live Of ancient ages: monarch, sage, and bard, Stand in their living lineaments, invested With power, or wisdom, or the gift of song. These still are common ruins—the remains Of those who were the vulgar of their day, Who battled, built, and traded, and so died, Leaving no trace but nameless monuments, The cast attire of ages, which but serve To show the present how the past went mad, And, like Cassandra, prophesy in vain. The earth yet bears more glorious vestiges Of Time’s illustrious few, whose memory Is greater than the greatest thing that lives— Haloed by veneration, wonder, love— Whose very tombs stand in life’s calendar Eras of thought once seen. Is there an eye Could coldly gaze on aught that bears a trace Of Avon’s matchless master of the breast? Who could approach old Dryburgh’s tombs, and feel not The illustrious presence of his great compeer, Whose tomb yet moistens with a nation’s woe, Whose star is young in heaven? Or who can walk Unmoved the cloisters and religious aisles Where Milton lies, renowned with “prophets old,” And honoured Newton, to whom the starred vault Is an enduring monument, as much As the Pantheon’s dome is Angelo’s? What is the pride of kings, the world’s vain splendour, To such a presence as they witnessed there Who disinterred the bones of Raphael, Awful from the repose of centuries? There stood that day a solemn, anxious crowd Around that altar which conceals beneath The mighty master’s relics—for there was a doubt If it were truly there that he was laid. And there they found all the dull grave could keep Of that Immortal. With no common awe They bent o’er his dark cell, as it disclosed Its treasure to the selfsame holy light That gladdened oft of old the master’s heart, And waked his heaven-eyed genius; while beneath The shadowy splendour of that spacious dome He stood in living sanctity, a pure And heavenly-minded man—even where they stood To gaze upon his dust—and all around He scattered bright and hallowed images Of perfect beauty—in their brightness there Still lying as he left them. Shadows fair Of angel form and feature—ye who gaze In clouded splendour through those cloisters old, Looking as things of life—could ye behold Those slender bones, they were the living hand Beneath whose touch ye started into being And grew to light and beauty, covering Your storied frescoes with the lines of grace, Harmonious hues and features of the sky. And yonder is your birthplace, yon light skull— The slight and delicate shrine of all that mind! ’Tis a strange thought how vast a world resolved In thy small compass! Senseless as thou art, Who could behold thee as a mouldering bone, The mere dust of unsphered humanity? There, from that lowly cell as rose to light The canonized remains of one whose mind Hath been a worship to the eye of ages, They were not seen thus coldly—time gave back Its venerable honours registered Deep in the heart of living Italy— A crown of many-tinted sanctities. Thy beauty, goodness, and pure innocence, Thy faculty of vision, gift divine, Rushed round thee as a glory—thou wert seen With all thy laurels round thy honoured tomb. Thine is no pile of unrecording stone— Pale marble column or tall pyramid, That vainly robs oblivion of its prey: Thy name lives on each lip—thy monuments Are treasures fondly kept midst precious things, Sought out in every land which the sun warms To nobler thoughts—thine are perennial wreaths Of trophies yet surviving, when the fame Of fields that rang through Europe, and made pale The peaceful hamlets of an hundred realms, Have shrunk within the fretted register, The silent scroll, named History—still the halls Of national state or regal pomp are bright With thy far-sought creations, costliest Among the treasured trophies of the mind; And as thy time on earth was consecrated To sacred labours meet for holy walls— So would I deem thy gifted spirit still, Invested in its light of heavenly thoughts, The minister of some pure temple, where No human errors mingle with the work.