HIGH throned above th' encircling meadows fair Our Lady of the Rocks holds queenly sway! Bright kerchiefed peasants daily wend their way With clattering sabots up the winding stair, Pausing at each rude rock-hewn station, there To bend the knee and many an Ave say. Up, up they climb, their voices echoing gay Till by the Virgin's shrine they kneel in prayer. This is that "Jacob's Ladder" famed afar To which the Kings of France made pilgrimage Asking for favors both in Peace and War. Well named!--for Heavenwards the way is tending, And all these happy, pious folk presage Angels of God ascending and descending. H. L. P. BUT, when so sad thou canst no sadder, Cry, and upon thy so sore loss Shall shine the traffic of Jacob's ladder Pitched between heaven and Charing Cross. So in the night my soul, my daughter, Cry, clinging heaven by the hems, And lo! Christ walking on the water Not of Gennesaret but Thames. FRANCIS THOMPSON. [Illustration: XVII ROCHER-ST.-POL _L'escalier de Jacob_] OFT have I seen at some cathedral door A laborer, pausing in the dust and heat, Lay down his burden, and with reverent feet Enter, and cross himself, and on the floor Kneel to repeat his paternoster o'er; Far off the noises of the world retreat; The loud vociferations of the street Become an undistinguishable roar. So as I enter here from day to day, And leave my burden at this minster gate, Kneeling in prayer, and not ashamed to pray, The tumult of the time disconsolate To inarticulate murmurs dies away, While the eternal ages watch and wait. How strange the sculptures that adorn these towers! This crowd of statues, on whose folded sleeves Birds build their nests; while canopied with leaves Parvis and portal bloom like trellised bowers And the vast minster seems a cross of flowers! But fiends and dragons on the gargoyled eaves Watch the dead Christ between the living thieves, And, underneath, the traitor Judas lowers! Ah! from what agonies of heart and brain, What exultations trampling on despair, What tenderness, what tears, what hate of wrong, What passionate outcry of the soul in pain Uprose this poem of the earth and air, This mediæval miracle of song! H. W. LONGFELLOW. [Illustration: XVIII ROCHER-ST.-POL _Le Parvis de Ste Frédigonde_] THE CATHEDRAL