For acclamation and for sacring now One form must serve, more solemn for the breach Of old observances, whose absence here Deeplier impress’d the heart, than all display Of regal pomp and wealth pontifical, Of vestments radiant with their gems, and stiff With ornature of gold; the glittering train, The long procession, and the full-voiced choir. This day the forms of piety and war, In strange but fitting union must combine. Not in his alb and cope and orary Came Urban now, nor wore he mitre here, Precious or auriphrygiate; bare of head He stood, all else in arms complete, and o’er His gorget’s iron rings the pall was thrown Of wool undyed, which on the Apostle’s tomb Gregory had laid, and sanctified with prayer; That from the living Pontiff and the dead Replete with holiness, it might impart Doubly derived its grace. One Page beside Bore his broad-shadow’d helm; another’s hand Held the long spear, more suited in these times For Urban, than the crosier richly wrought With silver foliature, the elaborate work Of Grecian or Italian artist, train’d In the eastern capital, or sacred Rome, Still o’er the West predominant, though fallen. Better the spear befits the shepherd’s hand When robbers break the fold. Now he had laid The weapon by, and held a natural cross Of rudest form, unpeel’d, even as it grew On the near oak that morn. Mutilate alike Of royal rites was this solemnity. Where was the rubied crown, the sceptre where, And where the golden pome, the proud array Of ermines, aureate vests, and jewelry, With all which Leuvigild for after kings Left, ostentatious of his power? The Moor Had made his spoil of these, and on the field Of Xeres, where contending multitudes Had trampled it beneath their bloody feet, The standard of the Goths forgotten lay Defiled, and rotting there in sun and rain. Utterly is it lost; nor ever more Herald or antiquary’s patient search Shall from forgetfulness avail to save Those blazon’d arms, so fatally of old Renown’d through all the affrighted Occident. That banner, before which imperial Rome First to a conqueror bow’d her head abased; Which when the dreadful Hun, with all his powers, Came like a deluge rolling o’er the world, Made head, and in the front of battle broke His force, till then resistless; which so oft Had with alternate fortune braved the Frank: Driven the Byzantine from the farthest shores Of Spain, long lingering there, to final flight; And of their kingdoms and their name despoil’d The Vandal, and the Alan, and the Sueve; Blotted from human records is it now As it had never been. So let it rest With things forgotten! But Oblivion ne’er Shall cancel from the historic roll, nor Time, Who changeth all, obscure that fated sign, Which brighter now than mountain snows at noon To the bright sun displays its argent field.