Page:Pleasant Memories of Pleasant Lands.djvu/235

 210 WESTMINSTER ABBEY.

How low ye sleep amid the mouldering throng, Whose tuneful echoes keep the world awake, While age on age their fleeting transit take !

How damp the vault where sweeps their banner-fold, Whose clarion-cry made distant regions quake !

How weak the men of might ! how tame the bold ! Chained to the narrow niche, and locked in marble cold.

He of lost Paradise, who nobly sang,

Whose thought sublime above our lower sphere

Soared as a star ; and he who deftly rang The lyre of fancy, o er the smile and tear, Ruling supreme ; and he, who taught the strain To roll Pindaric o er his native plain ;

He, too, who poured on Isis streamlet clear

Unto his Shepherd Lord the hymn of praise, I bow me at your shrines, ye great of other days.

&quot; 1 know that my Redeemer livetli ! &quot; Grave Deep on our hearts, as on thy stony scroll,

That glorious truth which a lost world can save, Oh German minstrel ! whose melodious soul Still in the organ s living breath doth float, Devotion soaring on its seraph-note,

Or, with a wondering awe, the throng control,

When from some minster vast, like thunder-chime,

The Oratorio bursts in majesty sublime.

Here rest the rival statesmen, calm and meek, Even as the child, whose little quarrel o er,

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