Lowell again took passage in a sailing vessel, the St. Nicholas, Bragdon, master, which left New York 4 June, 1855, bound for Havre. Among his companions was Dr. Elliott, under whose care he had been a dozen years before, when his eyes were in a bad way. It was a four weeks’ voyage, and Lowell amused himself with Lever’s novels from beginning to end, as he lay stretched in a hammock on the quarter-deck. Reaching France, he spent three weeks in Paris among the pictures chiefly, and made an excursion to Chartres, apparently his first visit, but one which left so deep an impression on his mind that fourteen years later, when he wrote “The Cathedral,” which he wished at first to call “A Day at Chartres,” the same images which sprang to his mind when he wrote of his visit directly after in a letter to Mr. Norton, recurred and found poetic expression. “It is the home now,” he wrote, “of innumerable swallows and sparrows, who build upon the shoulders of those old great ones (the stone angels and saints)--as we little folks do too, I am afraid. Even here I found the Norman--for when I mounted to the spire, I saw numbers of hawks who dwell in the higher parts, as in their castles, and prey on the poor Saxons below.” So in the poem he takes a parting look “At those old weather-pitted images Of by-gone struggle, now so sternly calm. About their shoulders sparrows had built nests, And fluttered, chirping, from gray perch to perch, Now on a mitre poising, now a crown, Irreverently happy. While I thought How confident they were, what careless hearts Flew on those lightsome wings and shared the sun, A larger shadow crossed; and looking up I saw where, nesting in the hoary towers, The sparrow-hawk slid forth on noiseless air, With sidelong head that watched the joy below, Grim Norman baron o’er this clan of Kelts.”