Here in this place which I myself did plan, With poplars, oaks and fountains,—and with sculpture, The rounded body of the soul of beauty— Here in this garden, by my own command I sit alone under the freshening twilight. Not to my eyes shall be made visible Ever again morning or noon or twilight,— Not to my eyes—which are my servants now No longer, save as servants in the grave. But to my forehead and my finger-tips The days give touch of bud and opening And of their bloom and of their hovering fall. The morrow shall be born with sighs and rain, But this is peace, this twilight, this is pause Between the sunny and the rainy day, Pause for the elements, and pause for me, As though it were a silver brook that ran Between a blinded day and blinded night,— Between the dust of life and the dust of death. Why shall I sit here? Why are colonnades And paths and pagan statuaries more Adroitly dear to my unseeing eyes Than all the beaded letters of the Books And colorings of all the bended Saints? Because I hear the stealing feet of peace Among these marbles more than anywhere, Than in that cell itself where I have been True Christian and exemplar of the Creed To my own heart. There, not a Cardinal In a red pageantry of holiness Before all comers, but a penitent In humble nakedness before my God, I found the potency of Jesus Christ…. And yet it is not there but here that I Find peace. Sometimes I think that Hell hath set An outer court for me within my garden, That it may mock me better in its own! But whether Hell or rank mortality, This garden which I builded for my body Is the one garden now wherein my soul Finds comfort, benediction of the twilight. There in my cell, drawn on the walls, arise Old memories of craft and violence, Of lust for carven images of beauty: How in the night I sent my men to take That obelisk which I had offered twice Its value for and been refused,—to bring That obelisk and set it in my garden. The Prince of Palestrina never dared (Such has my might been) to recover it! Still I can see him gaping at the trick And wishing he might strangle me, the trickster! And though these eyes that cannot see would make Me now no quick report if that same obelisk Should be abstracted on a newer night, Yet how these fingers and this heart would know! Why shall my tears fall, as I sit among My oaks and poplars, fountains and my sculptures, Before my cypresses and Sabine hills? Have I not seen them all a thousand times? Are they not vanity? Would I behold Them more? Life, to an aged Cardinal, Blind and enfeebled, should but celebrate The Sacrifice of Jesus Christ who died. Time should grow short for prayer and preparation. Why is it then that life has seemed to pace More than enough its little path of vigil, But not to know the endless path of beauty Beyond the entrance and the mere beginning!