O day and night! O day and night! with rest abounding,
The soothing sinking down on hard-earned holy rest,
With grateful ease that grew from all the calm surrounding,
A languid, dreamful ease, my soul became possessed.
The hoarse sea-wind comes soughing, sighing, singing,
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.
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