Say thou wilt not leave me to dearth and despair.

To thy heart, to thy home, let the exile be taken,

"And feed me and shelter——" "Where, outcast, ah, where?

Like thee I am homeless and spurned of all mortals;

The House of my fathers yawns wide to the air.

"Stalks desolation across the void portals,

Hope lies aghast on the ruinous floor,

The halls that were thronged once with star-browed immortals,

"With gods statue-still o'er the world-whirr and roar,

With fauns of the forest and nymphs of the river,

Are cleft as if lightning had struck to their core.

[75]

"The luminous ceilings, where soaring for ever

Dim hosts of plumed angels smoked up to the sky,

With God-litten faces that yearned to the giver

"As vapours of morning the sun draws on high,

Now ravaged with rain hear the hollow winds whistle

Through rifts in the rafters which echo their cry.

"Blest walls that were vowed to the Virgin now bristle

With weeds of sick scarlet and plague-spotted moss,

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