| Close to the Sacred Heart, it nestles fair— A marble poem; an aesthetic dream Of sculptured beauty, fit to be the theme Of angel fancies; a Madonna-prayer Uttered in stone. Round columns light as air, And fretted cornice, Sharon’s Rose is wreathed— The passion-flower, the thorn-girt lily rare, The palm, the wheat, the grapes in vine-leaves sheathed. Tenderly bright, from mullioned windows glow Our Lady’s chaplet-mysteries. Behold, Her maiden statue in that shrine of snow, Looks upward to the skies of blue and gold; Content that, in the crypt, beneath her shining feet, The holy ones repose in dreamless slumber sweet. |
| —Eleanor C. Donnelly: Lady-Chapel at Eden Hall. |