Not more prodigious than that little town

Seem'd to these comers, were the pomp and power
To us, of ancient Rome in her renown;
Nor the elder Babylon, or ere that hour

VI.

Content, and cheerful Piety were found

Within those humble walls. From youth to age
The simple dwellers paced their even round
Of duty, not desiring to engage

Upon the busy world's contentious stage,

Whose ways they wisely had been train'd to dread:
Their inoffensive lives in pupilage

Perpetually, but peacefully they led,

From all temptation saved, and sure of daily bread.

VII.

They on the Jesuit, who was nothing loth,
Reposed alike their conscience and their cares;
And he, with equal faith, the trust of both
Accepted and discharged. The bliss is theirs
Of that entire dependence that
prepares
Entire submission, let what may befall:

And his whole careful course of life declares
That for their good he holds them thus in thrall,
Their Father and their Friend, Priest, Ruler, all in all.

VIII.

Food, raiment, shelter, safety, he provides;

No forecast, no anxieties have they;
The Jesuit governs, and instructs and guides;
Their part it is to honour and obey,
Like children under wise parental sway.
All thoughts and wishes are to him confest;
And when at length in life's last weary day
In sure and certain hope they sink to rest,

By him their eyes are closed, by him their burial blest.24

IX.

Deem not their lives of happiness devoid,
Though thus the years their course obscurely fill;
In rural and in household arts employ'd,
And many a pleasing task of pliant skill,
For emulation here unmix'd with ill,
Sufficient scope was given. Each had assign'd
His proper part, which yet left free the will;
So well they knew to mould the ductile miad

When her high gardens, and her cloud-capt tower, And her broad walls before the Persian fell; Nor those dread fanes on Nile's forsaken shore Whose ruins yet their pristine grandeur tell, Wherein the demon gods themselves might deign to By whom the scheme of that wise order was combined.

dwell.

Nor lack'd they store of innocent delight,
Music and song and dance and proud array,
Whate'er might win the ear, or charm the sight;

Banners and pageantry in rich display

Brought forth upon some Saint's high holiday,
The altar drest, the church with garlands bung,
Arches and floral bowers beside the way,

And festal tables spread for old and young,

Nor with her clarion's blast awoke the slumbering air? Gladness in every heart, and mirth on every tongue.

XXIV.

Even when the spirit to that secret wood
Return'd, slow Mondai's silent stream beside,
No longer there it found the solitude
Which late it left: strange faces were descried,
Voices, and sounds of music far and wide,
And buildings seem'd to tower amid the trees,
And forms of men and beasts on every side,
As ever-wakeful fancy hears and sees,

XXX.

They laid her in the Garden of the Dead.
Such as a Christian burial-place should be
Was that fair spot, where every grave was spread
With flowers, and not a weed to spring was free;
But the pure blossoms of the orange tree
Dropt, like a shower of fragrance, on the bier;
And palms, the type of immortality,
Planted in stately colonnades, appear,

All things that it had heard, and scen, and more than That all was verdant there throughout the unvarying these.

XXV.

For in their sleep strange forms deform'd they saw
Of frightful fiends, their ghostly enemies :
And souls who must abide the rigorous law
Weltering in fire, and there, with dolorous cries
Blaspheming roll around their hopeless eyes;
And those who, doom'd a shorter term to bear
In penal flames, look upward to the skies,
Seeking and finding consolation there,

year.

ΧΧΧΙ.

Nor ever did irreverent feet intrude

Within that sacred spot; nor sound of mirth,
Unseemly there profane the solitude,
Where solemnly committed earth to earth,
Waiting the summons for their second birth,
Whole generations in Death's peaceful fold
Collected lay, green innocence, ripe worth,
Youth full of hope, and age whose days were told,

And feel, like dew from Heaven, the precious aid of Compress'd alike into that mass of mortal mould.

prayer.

XXVI.

And Angels who around their glorious Queen
In adoration bent their heads abased;
And infant faces in their dreams were seen
Hovering on cherub wings; and Spirits placed
To be their guards invisible, who chased
With fiery arms their fiendish foes away:
Such visions overheated fancy traced,
Peopling the night with a confused

array

XXXII.

Mortal, and yet at the Archangel's voice
To put on immortality. That call
Shall one day make the sentient dust rejoice;
These bodies then shall rise and cast off all
Corruption, with whate'er of earthly thrall
Had clogg'd the heavenly image, then set free.
How then should Death a Christian's heart appal?
Lo, lieaven for you is open;-enter, ye

That made its hours of rest more restless than the day. Children of God, and heirs of his eternity!

XXVII.

To all who from an old erratic course

Of life, within the Jesuit's fold were led,

The change was perilous. They felt the force
Of habit, when, till then in forests bred,
A thick perpetual umbrage overhead,
They came to dwell in open light and air.
This ill the Fathers long had learnt to dread,
And still devised such means as might prepare
The new reclaim'd unhurt this total change to bear.

XXVIII.

All thoughts and occupations to commute,
To change their air, their water, and their food,
And those old habits suddenly uproot
Conform'd to which the vital powers pursued
Their functions, such mutation is too rude
For man's fine frame unshaken to sustain.
And these poor children of the solitude
Began ere long to pay the bitter pain

XXXIII.

This hope supported Mooma, hand in hand
When with Yeruti at the grave she stood.
Less even now of death they understand
Than of the joys eternal that ensued;
The bliss of iufiuite beatitude

To them had been their teacher's favourite theme,
Wherewith their hearts so fully were imbued,
That it the sole reality might seem,

Life, death, and all things else, a shadow or a dream.

XXXIV.

Yea, so possest with that best hope were they,
That if the heavens had opened overhead,
And the Archangel with his trump that day
To judgment had convoked the quick and dead,
They would have heard the summons not with dread,
But in the joy of faith that knows no fear:
Come Lord! come quickly! would this pair have said,
And thou, O Queen of men and Angels dear,

That their new way of life brought with it in its train. Lift us whom thou hast loved into thy happy sphere!