Faith loves to lean on Time's destroying arm, And age, like distance, lends a double charm; In dim cathedrals, dark with vaulted gloom, What holy awe invests the saintly tomb! There pride will bow, and anxious care expand, And creeping avarice come with open hand; The gay can weep, the impious can adore, From morn's first glimmerings on the chancel floor Till dying sunset sheds his crimson stains Through the faint halos of the irised panes. Yet there are graves, whose rudely-shapen sod Bears the fresh footprints where the sexton trod; Graves where the verdure has not dared to shoot, Where the chance wild-flower has not fixed its root, Whose slumbering tenants, dead without a name, The eternal record shall at length proclaim Pure as the holiest in the long array Of hooded, mitred, or tiaraed clay! Come, seek the air; some pictures we may gain Whose passing shadows shall not be in vain; Not from the scenes that crowd the stranger's soil, Not from our own amidst the stir of toil, But when the Sabbath brings its kind release, And Care lies slumbering on the lap of Peace. The air is hushed, the street is holy ground; Hark! The sweet bells renew their welcome sound As one by one awakes each silent tongue, It tells the turret whence its voice is flung. The Chapel, last of sublunary things That stirs our echoes with the name of Kings, Whose bell, just glistening from the font and forge, Rolled its proud requiem for the second George, Solemn and swelling, as of old it rang, Flings to the wind its deep, sonorous clang; The simpler pile, that, mindful of the hour When Howe's artillery shook its half-built tower, Wears on its bosom, as a bride might do, The iron breastpin which the "Rebels" threw, Wakes the sharp echoes with the quivering thrill Of keen vibrations, tremulous and shrill; Aloft, suspended in the morning's fire, Crash the vast cymbals from the Southern spire; The Giant, standing by the elm-clad green, His white lance lifted o'er the silent scene, Whirling in air his brazen goblet round, Swings from its brim the swollen floods of sound; While, sad with memories of the olden time, Throbs from his tower the Northern Minstrel's chime,-- Faint, single tones, that spell their ancient song, But tears still follow as they breathe along.