face and curly locks; or the mailed statue of Robert of Normandy, with
scarlet surcoat, starting up like a warrior suddenly aroused. Such
tombs send a strange thrill through one, a thrill of wonder and pity
and awe. What of them now? Sleepest thou, son of Atreus? Dost thou
sleep, and dream perchance of love and war, of the little life that
seemed so long, and over which the slow waves of time have flowed?
Little by little, in the holy walls, so charged with faith and
tenderness and wistful love, the pathetic vision of mortality creeps
across the mind, and one loses oneself in a dream of wonder at the
brief days so full of life, the record left for after time, and the
silence of the grave.
Then, when I have drunk my fill of sweet sights, I love to sit silent,
while the great bell hums in the roof, and gathering footsteps of young
and old patter through the echoing aisles. There is a hush of
expectation. A few quiet worshippers assemble; the western light grows
low, and lights spring to life, one after another, in the misty choir.
Then murmurs a voice, an Amen rises in full concord, and as it dies
away the slumberous thunder of a pedal note rolls on the air; the
casements whirr, the organ speaks. That fills, as it were, to the brim,
as with some sweet and fragrant potion, the cup of beauty; and the
dreaming, inquiring spirit sinks content into the flowing, the aspiring
tide, satisfied as with some heavenly answer to its sad questionings.
Then the stately pomp moves slowly to its place--so familiar, perhaps
trivial an act to those who perform it, so grave and beautiful a thing
to those who see it. The holy service proceeds with a sense of
exquisite deliberation, leading one, as by a ladder, through the
ancient ways, up to the message of to-day. Through psalm and canticle
and anthem the solemnity passes on; and perhaps some single slender
voice, some boyish treble, unconscious of its beauty and pathos, thrown
into relief, like a fountain springing among dark rocks, by the slow
thunders of the organ, comes to assure the heart that it can rest, if
but for a moment, upon a deep and inner peace, can be gently rocked, as
it were, in a moving boat, between the sky and translucent sea. Then
falls the rich monotone of prayer; and the organ wakes again for one
last message, pouring a flood of melody from its golden throats, and
dying away by soft gradations into the melodious bourdon of its close.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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