A gray and dusty daylight flows

athwart the shatter’d traceries,

pale absence of the ruin’d rose.

Here once, on labour-harden’d knees,

beneath the kindly vaulted gloom

that gather’d them in quickening ease,

they saw the rose of heaven bloom,

alone, in heights of musky air,

with many an angel’s painted plume.

So, shadowing forth their dim-felt prayer,

the daedal glass compell’d to grace

the outer days indifferent stare,

where now its disenhallow’d face

beholds the petal-ribs enclose

nought, in their web of shatter’d lace,

save this pale absence of the rose.