Who seeks a throne seeks torment: woman's part
Hath seldom been the lust of self-renown:
Here one grave holds a doubly broken heart,
Another holds a heart half turned to stone.

And they were kin: yet Mary's gentle grace
Was not enough to shrive her of her crime:
Nor could the headstrong Tudor queen efface
The blot she left upon the page of time.

VI.

Here rest the harmed and harmful. 66

Sculptured lies,

"Stone-mocking pageants, brag their splendid lives. "A charnel house of festering bones supplies

"The dank arena where the Churchman strives.

"This truly grants but weakling aid to faith,
"That sinners rot where worship's foot hath trod.
"Is this no sin? That withered dust of death,
"Pollutes it not the sacred floor of God?"

Behold! this teeming world is all a tomb:
And not a thing in it hath breath or life
That bears not with it individual doom,

And with it mixture in the general strife.

Each preys on each, and each one each survives
Tax-nurtured on another's destined doom:

A gentle sigh-and lo! a myriad lives;
A fairy step-behold a hecatomb!

"Tis all too hard: but wreck of falling years

Hath shown a gleam full bright to pierce the mist

That surges upwards from this fount of tears

Light of a world of light, a risen Christ!

Aye then, blame not such shrines: a life in death,
The hope that lives for us beyond no more,
Meets here a death in life; and here a breath
Is wafted to us from the further shore.

VII.

My thought ran o'er the story of the world,
And shaped this fancy in the Eastern sky,
Where, bathed in morning, night-born clouds unfurled
O'er earth beneath their guardian canopy.

A stately mass up-reared a motley height
Athwart the wide unmeasured domes of air:
And millions laboured in their puny might

To swell its volume, and work out their share.

Some built with dross, some heaped on gems and gold,
Some ruthless hands destroyed what others made:

The worth of each one's work was yet untold,
The wage that work had earned was yet unpaid.

Then came some sound of waters, voice of storm,
Some roar of thunder, or devouring flame:
Far flashed-ennobling every baser form—
The deathless radiance of one glorious Name!

I hold our Shrine-by many minds contrived,
One whole, tho' raised by many-handed toil,
In splendours multiform, from one derived,
O'ertopping ages of a state's turmoil—
May presage some such vision-palaces
Amidst the realms of God's eternity;
Like as this throbbing sense, not yet at ease,
Lives but the germ of what Man is to be.

CHARLES LEWIS TUPPER.

NOTES.

§ 1. Edward the Confessor, the last of the Saxon Kings of England, founded Westminster Abbey. He was present at the Consecration, on Innocents' Day, December 28th, 1065 A.D. He rose from a sick bed to attend the ceremony, and died eight days after it. The favourite project of his life was a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. Obvious State reasons prevented its fulfilment. The building of the Abbey was the work of piety he proposed to himself in its stead.

§ 5. Edward I. brought the Chair of Scone to England. It is a rough stone upon which the Kings of Scotland used to be crowned. It is supposed to ensure to its possessors sovereignty over Scotland. It has been the subject of one war and several treaties. It is placed close to Edward I's grave, which is a plain sarcophagus, with no ornament or title on it whatever [stanzas 1-4].

Richard II. is buried in the Abbey. Henry IV., who deprived him of his kingdom and (probably) of his life, was seized with the fit which proved fatal, whilst praying near his former Sovereign's grave. He was carried out, and died almost immediately afterwards in the Jerusalem Chamber close by [stanzas 5-7]. Mary Queen of Scots, and Elizabeth, are both buried in the Abbey [stanzas 8, 9].