Placed 'midst the city's busiest life,
Not a stone's throw from the deadly strife
Of the metropolitan mart,
Old Trinity stands; her spire, like a hand,
Points ever upward; her chimes demand
From the hardened world a heart.

Clustered around her, buried, lie
Many whose names can never die,
Founders of their country's weal:
Patriot churchmen, statesmen, soldiers,
There they sleep who were its moulders;
Sculptured stones their deeds reveal.

Trinity's self was new-born with the nation;
Springing from ashes of desolation,
She helped to forge posterity.
Now she looks from her chosen station,
At pageant, starvation, begg'ry, ovation,
Results of her sons' prosperity.

Within, away from the din and crowd
And the mendicants' cries and the laughter loud,
Of Pleasure in hand with Youth,
Is the silent yet eloquent reign of Peace
And the utterance of words which shall not cease
While the earth has a place for Truth.

When peal on peal the organ's voice
Calls the assembled to rejoice
For blessings unsurpassed,
Or when its milder tones tell Grief,
Then e'en Death's triumph is but brief,
Old Trinity's charm but half is grasped.

Far sweeter it is in the twilights glim,
When the symbolled altar is growing dim,
And the wayward shadows dart,
To watch the golden light stream in
Each lofty window, as though all sin
At its entrance must depart.

Saints' and martyrs' pictured graces,
Illumined by these heavenly traces,
Shine in blue and saffron and red;
But in the sun's last traces, above their faces,
Beam the eyes which no might from the soul effaces,
And the Christ's mock-crowned head.

Literary Monthly, 1894.