("This structure you admire...")

TIME

(After Luis de Gongora)

I

For the Chapel of Our Lady of the Sacristy, in the holy

Church of Toledo, the burial place of Cardinal Sandoval

This structure you admire is the just pride

of Spanish sculpture. Stop here, passerby,

this porphyry too hard for diamond point,

these metals cut and polished by the file,

seal the earth of one who never oppressed the earth.

Do you know whose it is? If not, hold back,

and study this inscription, for its sense

gives speech to marble and a life to bronze.

Piety made this chapel beautiful,

and bound its majesty to what was right,

to the heroic dust of Sandoval,

who left his coat of arms, once five blue stars

ona gold field, to climb with surer feet

through the blue fields, and tread the golden stars.