On the altar in a row
The golden cups made glorious show!
Each King with his mailed hand
Took the red wine from its stand;
Each his right arm raised on high,
Pointing toward the eastern sky;
Then lowly on their knees they sank,
Their helmed heads bowing ere they drank.
With clasped hands they seemed to wait
The award of God and fate,
That His will he should reveal.
One dread moment, the appeal
Was by answering thunder heard;
In that utterance was the token
How of old the Word was spoken;
That God communed still with man,

From each side they met, and joined
Their mailed hands o'er the altar's fire;
Then each King his head declined,
And knelt before that holy pyre.
Memory was awaked, and thought;
Their tongues loosened, yet broke not
The stillness held through dateless years;
As if stayed by human fears,
Their changed natures dared not trust
The vouched pardon of the Just .
Silence was on them a power
Felt like judgment in that hour;
But faith, strengthening hope awoke,
They essayed the power, and spoke;
Their dark speech was in a tongue

From where slept their dust entombed
Slowly rose each Shape of stone!
Their souls burst at once the spell;
Each King his past life resumed,
And descended from his throne.
From their hands their sceptres fell;
While with solemn steps they trod
Toward the altar-place of God.
I heard the paved and brazen floor
Clang, as their massive heels tramped o'er;
Pale lightnings round their helmets blazed;
I saw their brows and eyeballs glazed,
As slowly each his vizor raised!
Faces solemn and sublime
As those seers of eldest time,

Behold, a change wrought and a wonder!
A tongue of utterance in thunder
Rang that vaulted dome along,
Deep and loud as that which told
Vengeance was reserved for wrong;
That man's sins should be repaid,
By the scales of justice weighed,
When o'er earth the deluge rolled.
With eyes raised, and breath withheld,
And heart by awe and marvel swelled,
In expectancy I leant
Against a brazen monument.
I felt the dead beneath me stirred;
I knew their dust that warning heard
From hollow caverns echoing under;

But the A VENGER stayed their breath,
And withheld their life in death,
Fate reserved for none beside;
They died not, their souls were bound
In the Statues of their pride,
And were fixed that altar round;
To see and feel how blest are those
On whom the peace of God o'erflows.
Such the fiat, stamped sublime
Steadfast to the end of time,
Of the Holy One, the Just,
To subdue the pride of dust,
I gazed upon those, haughty Forms,
Which through time and ages' storms
Had remained; decreed to be
Seated there eternally.

It was given me to know
They had sate from dateless time,
Watchful from their thrones sublime,
O'er the altar-place below,
Their armour was of mould foregone:
With strange lights their helmets shone.
On their shields the hosts of heaven
Were inwrought, a scroll was given
On each pedestal, to tell
How they triumphed, fought and fell;
But those records mocked the eye,
The language of a world gone by.

Visioned with the inward sight,
I saw by that prescient light,
They were Kings pre-Adamite;
Of that giant race of might,

An echo answered to my sigh.
I gazed upward; throned on high
In a niche of the grey wall,
Folded round with regal pall,
A crowned Monarch met mine eye.
Mailed from head to heel, alone
Seated on his stony throne;
In his hand a sceptre bearing,
On his brow defiance wearing,
And despair and mingled pride
Graven stone nor death could hide.
I gazed upon the wall opposed,
Which another King disclosed;
His helmed head bent forward frowning,
Regal signs his helmet crowning;
East and west were forms alike;
Each half rising as to strike.

Like an Organ-pipe profound,
Rolled the thunder's distant sound;
Methought I felt its deep Voice say,
" See how the mighty pass away!"
Then I prayed, and, while, the sound,
Of that pealing note instilled
My being with the awe it filled,
I knelt reverently on
The monumental brass that shone
With a glimmering fain, to show
That a Soul reposed below
In darkness with the worm beneath.
With hushed breath, and still as death,
I leaned upon the chancel-stone;
And thought how all forgot, unknown,
Were the mighty who slept there,

I stood before an ancient Church,
A solemn-browed star-pointing pile.
The carved and quaintly-sculptured porch
Was open; I paced through the aisle,
With breath withheld and noiseless tread;
Like one who feels, in reverent mood,
That life should silently intrude
Within the precincts of the dead.
I looked around; each mouldering tomb,
In livid light amid the gloom
Paled forth, the roof and pillars high
Wrought with antique imagery;
Figures strange that had no birth
Upon our familiar earth
Shapes distorted, vague, as we

A pale and livid halo spread
Its flood above the hoar hill's head,
As slowly from behind it rose
The large blank Moon in grey repose,
Faint gleaming like the spectral skull
Of buried day: her frontlet dull
Black shadows trenched where lights had been,
Like eyes their sockets sunk within;
A formless visage faintly traced,
With shade and glimmer half effaced.
The ancient rocks caught fitfully
The tremulous light of her wan eye,
As beneath her filmy veil
She showed her brow so high, so pale;
While with a cold and glittering gaze