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For a picture
OF SAINT CECILIA ATTENDED BY ANGELS.
BY MRS. HEMANS.
How rich that forehead's calm expanse!
How bright that heaven-directed glance!
—Waft her to Glory, winged Powers,
Ere Sorrow be renewed,
And intercourse with mortal hours
Bring hack a humbler mood!
Wordsworth.
How can that eye, with Inspiration beaming,
Wear yet so deep a calm?—Oh, Child of Song!
Is not the Music-Land a world of dreaming,
Where Forms of sad, bewildering beauty throng?
Hath it not sounds from voices long departed?
Echoes of tones that rung in childhood's ear?
Low, haunting whispers, which the weary-hearted,
Stealing 'midst crowds away, have wept to hear?
No, not for Thee!—thy Spirit, meek, yet queenly,
On its own starry height, beyond all this
Floating triumphantly, and yet serenely,
Breathes no faint under-tone through songs of bliss!
Z
