Where the chancel all below
With sky colours is a-glow.
From the chapel underneath,
Fretted by the salt wind's teeth,
To his home, with throb of pain,
Came the poet back again.
He was couching with the Caffre,
Deep amid the giant reeds,
Watching for the wounded lion
By the red pool where he feeds.
By the blood-drops on the branches
He was following a bear,
Cold above him hung the snow peaks,
Far below the earth spread fair.
From all these, with start of pain,
Came the poet back again.
From the dungeon of the abbey
Rising, lost in the midnight,
Watching from the far-off altar,
Slowly creep a speck of light.
From the stony figure waking
From his long sleep on the tomb,
When the moon was swiftly breaking
From her prison house of gloom.
When the ghostly choir was singing
Dirges to the long since dead,
With a black hood solemn muffled,
Or a white shroud on each head.-
From such scenes of fear and pain
Came the poet back again.
From the sound of smitten steel,
Through a roll of muffled wheel;
From a father's dying curse,
From deep blasphemies, or worse;
From the one word ne'er forgot,
From the echo of the clot,
Falling on the coffin-plate ;
From the death sob heard but late
From such agonies of pain
Came the poet back again.
THE belfry tower is old and strong—
God knows it hath been builded long-
For some cold hand has carved well,
Just over 'gainst the tenor bell,
And underneath the window grate,
Thirteen hundred forty-eight.
Long dead are those whose cross and sign,
And baptism of splashing wine,
Blessed the old bells, whose silver chime
Has never ceased from that same time.
Still sound they swing the whole of the eight As in thirteen hundred forty-eight.
Their broad hearts yet remain unbroken,
Firm and sound be this the token:
Hope and joy, and love and death
Are still vibrating in their breath,
Floating from the turret's state
As in thirteen hundred forty-eight.
They have tolled for the parting soul,
Or ere the sexton turned the moul;
Gladly greeted many a bride,
Welcomed children born to pride;
Have been still the voices of mute fate
From thirteen hundred forty-eight.
The monks are dead who blessed the bells,
The proud lord in a small grave dwells;
His child has grown to man and died,
Adulteress became the bride;
Yet still the belfry rears its state
As in thirteen hundred forty-eight.
THE OLD FISHERMAN'S LAMENT. [I remember once, at a Cornish fishing-town, seeing an old fisherman sitting, on a sunny afternoon in August, upon a broken boat that lay deeply imbedded in the hot, dry, soft, crumbling sand. The old man was almost in his dotage, and was mumbling inarticulate words to himself, as he looked, with a vacant and sorrowful stare, at the advancing waves that ran swiftly up to his feet.]
THE old man listens to the sea;
"Ye waves! ye stole my child from me!" The hoarse waves splashing ceaselessly,
Roar at his feet, with a restless glee.
"Ye waves! ye stole my child from me!
Many miles hence, on the Northern sea,
By the Silver Pits, where the scud blew free,
By the shoal where the dead men wait for me."
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