HAIL, awful pile! Child of Time's midnight age, <br />Now Mother in its youth renewed! The tomb <br />Of regal priests who banqueted on joys <br />Wrung from the peasants' woes: disciples strange <br />Of Him whose coat was woven without a seam <br />Throughout; who had not where to lay His head! <br />Great sepulchre of haughty gloom and grandeur— <br />Bestriding earth, like as thy shrinèd dead, <br />While living, did bestride the human mind— <br />Thy veritable being, which thy frown <br />Stamps on our consciousness so solemnly, <br />Would seem, like shapes in fables of thy times, <br />A phantom too unreal for our belief, <br />Were we not witnesses that oft the mind, <br />Disordered and oppressed by strong disease, <br />Creates, in throes of thought, its images <br />Of gorgeous dress and stature giantlike— <br />Dwarfing the voluntary portraitures <br />Sketched by Thought's pencil in the hours of health.<br /><br />Thomas Cooper<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/to-lincoln-cathedral/
