A wingèd death has smitten dumb thy bells, <br />And poured them molten from thy tragic towers: <br />Now are the windows dust that were thy flowers <br />Patterned like frost, petalled like asphodels. <br />Gone are the angels and the archangels, <br />The saints, the little lamb above thy door, <br />The shepherd Christ! They are not, any more, <br />Save in the soul where exiled beauty dwells. <br /> <br />But who has heard within thy valuted gloom <br />That old divine insistence of the sea, <br />When music flows along the sculptured stone <br />In tides of prayer, for him thy windows bloom <br />Like faithful sunset, warm immortally! <br />Thy bells live on, and Heaven is in their tone!<br /><br />Grace Hazard Conkling<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/rheims-cathedral-1914/
