And that is the way in which I stumbled into wedlock.  How many others, in their pursuit of what has seemed to them the substance, have failed to discover, perhaps too late, that they were following a flitting shadow,—­while I, favored mortal, in my chase of a dream, stumbled upon the greatest real good of my whole life!

* * * * *

THROUGH THE FIELDS TO SAINT PETER’S.

  There’s a by-road to Saint Peter’s.  First you swing across the Tiber
  In a ferry-boat that floats you in a minute from the crowd;
  Then through high-hedged lanes you saunter; then by fields and sunny
    pastures;
  And beyond, the wondrous dome uprises like a golden cloud.

  And this morning,—­Easter morning,—­while the streets were thronged
    with people,
  And all Rome moved toward the Apostle’s temple by the usual way,
  I strolled by the fields and hedges,—­stopping now to view the
    landscape,
  Now to sketch the lazy cattle in the April grass that lay.

  Galaxies of buttercups and daisies ran along the meadows,—­
  Rosy flushes of red clover,—­blossoming shrubs and sprouting vines;
  Overhead the larks were singing, heeding not the bells a-ringing,—­
  Little knew they of the Pasqua, or the proud Saint Peter’s shrines.

  Contadini, men and women, in their very best apparel,
  Trooping one behind another, chatted all along the roads;
  Boys were pitching quoits and coppers; old men in the sun were basking: 
  In the festive smile of Heaven all laid aside their weary loads.

  Underneath an ancient portal, soon I passed into the city;
  Entered San Pietro’s Square, now thronged with upward crowding forms;
  Past the Cardinals’ gilded coaches, and the gorgeous scarlet lackeys,
  And the flashing files of soldiers, and black priests in gloomy swarms.

  All were moving to the temple.  Push aside the ponderous curtain! 
  Lo! the glorious heights of marble, melting in the golden dome,
  Where the grand mosaic pictures, veiled in warm and misty softness,
  Swim in faith’s religious trances,—­high above all heights of Rome.

  Grand as Pergolesi chantings, lovely as a dream of Titian,
  Tones and tints and chastened splendors wreathed and grouped in sweet
    accord;
  While through nave and transept pealing, soar and sink the choral
    voices,
  Telling of the death and glorious resurrection of the Lord.

  But, ah, fatal degradation for this temple of the nations! 
  For the soul is never lifted by the accord of sights and sound;
  But yon priest in gold and satin, murmuring with his ghostly Latin,
  Drags it from its natural flights, and trails its plumage on the ground.

  And to-day the Pope is heading his whole army of gay puppets,
  And the great machinery round us moving with an extra show: 
  Genuflexions, censers, mitres, mystic motions, candle-lighters,
  And the juggling show of relics to the crowd that gapes below,