Ger. He raised from off her face the pall, and 'Lo!'
He cried, 'that saintly flesh which ye of late
With sacrilegious hands, ere yet entombed,
Had in your superstitious selfishness
Almost torn piecemeal. Fools! Gross-hearted fools!
These limbs are God's, not yours: in life for you
They spent themselves; now till the judgment-day
By virtue of the Spirit embalmed they lie--
Touch them who dare. No! Would you find your Saint,
Look up, not down, where even now she prays
Beyond that blazing orb for you and me.
Why hither bring her corpse? Why hide her clay
In jewelled ark beneath God's mercy-seat--
A speck of dust among these boundless aisles,
Uprushing pillars, star-bespangled roofs,
Whose colours mimic Heaven's unmeasured blue,
Save to remind you, how she is not here,
But risen with Him that rose, and by His blaze
Absorbed, lives in the God for whom she died?
Know her no more according to the flesh;
Or only so, to brand upon your thoughts
How she was once a woman--flesh and blood,
Like you--yet how unlike! Hark while I tell ye.'
2d Monk. How liked the mob all this? They hate him sore.
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