Its constant message from the patient waves.
While high above cathedral bells were ringing,
Or falling voices chanted hymns of praise,
And all the land seemed filled with peace and promised length of days.

* * * * *

O day and night! O day and night! once, all unheeding,
By sun and summer wind with tender touch caressed,
I wandered where the strains, the sacred strains, were pleading,
And, kneeling in the fane, my thoughts to prayer addressed.
And softly rose the murmur'd organ mystery,
And swell'd around the colonnaded aisle,
Where smiled the pictured saints of holy history
On prostrate penitents who prayed the while:
I could not pray there, but I felt that God Himself might smile.

O day and night! O day and night! while I was kneeling
There came the strangest sense of some loved presence near;
A re-awakening rush of well-remembered feeling
Thrill'd thro' me, held me still, with vague expectant fear.
Half turn'd from me, there stood beside the altar,
Where incense-clouds nigh veiled him from my sight,
A fair-haired priest--my quicken'd heart-beats falter!
Or is he priest, or is he acolyte,
Or layman devotee who prays in novice robes bedight?

O day and night! O day and night! whence comes this feeling?
For all unreal seem day and night and life and death,
And all unreal the hope that sets my senses reeling,