St. Augustine's Holiday and Other Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

St. Augustine retires to Cassiciacum to prepare for his baptism — His company, especially his mother Monica, his natural son Adeodatus, and the young poet Licentius—Augustine's Latin—Employment of the party—Their studies and discussions—General condition of Christian art and thought—Augustine's love of light; of the sea— Speculations about disembodied spirits—Story of the Notary of Uzala; of Gennadius—Comments upon the Psalter, especially the Penitential Psalms; upon the Miracle of Cana—Licentius reads Virgil aloud—His version of the tale of Dido—Speculations of the young poet upon Virgil's condition in the world of spirits—Conclusion.

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Note.—The books of St. Augustine which belong to this period are these—“De Ordine,” “De Vit. Beat.,” “Contra Academ.,” “De Immort.,” and the “Soliloquia.” Augustine's own narrative has been closely followed throughout this poem. The thoughts attributed to him are generally to be found in his writings. Thus, his feeling for light is beautifully marked in “Confess.,” lib. x. 34. His appreciation of the ocean will be doubted by no one who reads the following sentences. “In cœli et terræ et maris multimodâ et variâ pulchritudine, in ipsius quoque maris tam grandi spectaculo, cum sese diversis coloribus induit velut vestibus, et aliquando viride atque hoc multis modis, aliquando purpureum, aliquendo cœruleum est. Quàm porro delectabiliter spectatur

etiam quandocunque turbatur, et fit inde major suavitas.” (“De Civ. Dei,” xxii. 24). The stories of the Notary and of Gennadius are to be found in “Epp.,” clviii. ix., so that the former at least is, literally speaking, an anachronism as it stands here. Licentius read Virgil to the party upon fine afternoons, substituting at times, apparently, poems of his own.

Now the sweet arrow of the Love divine
Resistlessly had pierced Augustine's heart.
The flowers of speech he will no more entwine,
Frequent no more the rhetorician's mart.
He gazes on the sun so long denied,
And the sun-gazer groweth sunny-eyed.

“His forehead, deep encrimson'd with the crown;
His lips, so full of grace, all deadly pale;
My Shepherd's wounded heart with woe cast down,
My Shepherd's cheek cut with the cruel hail—
O'er what wild hills, in face of what a foam,
With what exultant arm He bore me home!

“Wholly for my poor love Himself He gave.
A great gift for a miserable whole;
An ocean for a little dying wave.
And shall I offer him a divided soul,
Half of the mud that in the street doth lie,
If half the azure of the starlit sky?”

Said Verecundus, “Thou art ill at ease.
My farm lies north from here but a few leagues;
Fair is its meadow-land, fair its chestnut trees.
Go rest thee well from thy thoughts' long fatigues,
Thou and thy dearest.” So Augustine went
On holiday to that green banishment—

For rest enfolded in that happy haunt,
For time to meditate the Church's creed;
For prayer, that when from the baptismal font
He rises by regeneration freed,
The white life issuing thence his soul may win
To wear immaculate in a world of sin.

It was a little company of ten.
Over them all was Monica gently set,
A flower of womanhood for those loving men.
O winter flower, O faded violet,
By what rude fortune from thy garden toss'd,
Paled by what sun, discoloured by what frost?

With her a boy of fifteen summers came.
Into the presence of the lad did pass
An influence from a climate as of flame;
And in those lustrous eyes of his there was
A tint of flowers and oceans far away
Amid the woods and waves of Africa.

Him evermore a shadow overhung,
Not of the great Numidian forests born—
The prophecy of genius that dies young,
The far cloud-film of a too radiant morn.
Ah! they who early pass through one dark gate
Have looks like thine, thou young Adeodate!

Thou art of those who breathe with a strange smile
The delicate words that only genius saith;
Guests whom God spares us but a little while,
For they are wanted in the land of death,
And leave but tracks of light that was not seen,
Hints of a golden land that might have been.

Hast thou no mother with a name to note?
It is not written in the tenderest scroll
That love and recollection ever wrote,
The perfected confession of a soul.
Into the dark she glides, a silent shame,
And a veil'd memory without a name.

And the world knoweth not what words she pray'd,
With what long wail before the altar wept,
What tale she told, what penitence she made,
What measure by her beating heart was kept,
Nor in what vale or mountain the earth lies
Upon the passionate Carthaginian's eyes.

Well that one penitent hath found such grace
As to be silent in the silent years,
That no light hand hath lifted from her face
The silver veil enwoven of her tears.
Well that one book at least, at least one sod,
Keeps close one tender secret of our God.

Well that the virgin saints of her may cry,
“Our sister comes, mute after many tears—
Some anguish rounded by a victory
Is hers, some calm after a storm of years.
O noble pity, that consoles her quite!
O large forgiveness, touching all to white!”

Next comes the laureate of the little throng,
The young Licentius, whose deft art confers
Some grace upon the later Latin song—
Waxwork, not marble, in hexameters—
Drawing in colours soft, but soon to cease,
A pastel for a proud old masterpiece.

But one moves aye among them as the chief—
A thoughtful brow with saint engrav'd thereon.
And there was something of the Psalmist's grief,
And of the inspiration of St. John,
And of the gravity that might beseem
The Plato of that little Academe.

Roman his speech, not as men talk'd at Rome.
Here an apostle spake, and there a psalm,
And here philosophy had made its home.
Passion and thought he pack'd in epigram,
Marring the stone of speech wherewith he wrought,
But perfecting the likeness of his thought.

O'er all he said there hung a subtle spell.
For with him over sea a native art
He brought, an accent's glamour suiting well
Magnificent barbarisms of the heart,
Learn'd by inhaling 'neath Numidian trees
Sunny solècisms of the provinces.

Four lakes, that made a fourfold heav'n below,
Slept in that pleasant place, where Apennine
Grey-fissured meets the Alpine lines of snow;
Round it a symphony of light divine,
Red on the hill-side, gold along the plain,
The purpling cluster, and the yellowing grain.

One of those spots where busy hearts are still
And world-worn natures quietly renew'd.
I see it now, hill rising over hill,
The near ones crested with the olive wood,
And in the bluish distance, where morn breaks,
White behind all a line of snowy peaks.

Fair sped the days. At noon, not overproud,
They help'd the rustics with the vines or herd,
Which done, full oft the autumn-tide allow'd
Sweet liberty for prayer or for the word,
Or for discourses grave, or readings made
From a page chequer'd by the chestnut shade.

Well for the men whose spirits try to scale
The mountain peaks that overtop our lives.
There is a victory for them that fail,
Defeat alone for him who never strives.
High themes wherewith to cope makes weak men strong:—
Well for the men who lived when thought was young.

Well for the men who lived in the long ago,
They breath'd an ampler quietude than we;
A few great books which they had time to know,
Fresh as the untiring voices of the sea,
Made the old music that is ever new:—
Well for the men who lived when books were few.

Few books were with them; but they were the best—
The Epistles, Gospels, and prophetic scroll;
The Psalter, too, wherein the ruggedest
Of Latin takes to it a Hebrew soul,
And seems to yearn for music that may reach
The mysteries that lie beyond all speech.

Others, moreover, which no sage contemns,
Nearest immortal mortals ever wrought,
Whose perfect words are the all-opulent gems
That star the broad brows of the kings of thought,
Whose lines shall live as long as numbers flow—
Plato was there, Plotin, and Cicero.

They show in distance—chief the glorious Greek—
The needle-point of truth enwrapt in mist,
Not the way leading to that difficult peak—
Yet Plato preach'd magnificently Christ.
Yea, in each volume, and on every sod,
Whatever truth man troweth is of God.

Now, as I write, I seem to hear the kine,
The rippling murmur of the little stream
That runs toward the bath through banks of vine,
I see the moonlit hills rise like a dream—
The very leaf which autumn-tide brought low
In Lombardy a thousand years ago;

And as it dropped insubstantive on the rill,
And sinking help'd to break the brimming flow,
Set moving high discourse of fate and will,
Proving that chance is God's incognito—
That chance, in Heaven's tongue order, interweaves
Vaster variety than waves and leaves.

And oft I meditate what round they made
Of solemn usage and of stately form,
On what fair frame of visible things they stay'd;
What music fell in tears or rose in storm,
What soft imaginative rites they had,
With what investiture their faith they clad.

Not then the church rose visibly encrown'd.
No mighty minster tower'd majestic yet.
No organ gave its plenitude of sound,
And on the Alpine pinnacle was set
No carven King, whose crown is of the thorn,
No Calvary crimson in the southern morn.

No miracle of beauty and of woe
Look'd from the wall, or for the rood was hewn,
No colour'd sunlight fell on the floor below.
Under the silver of the Italian moon,
No visible throng of angels made their home
On the white wonder of the Gothic dome.

Yet, fed with inward beauty through the years,
Much did the Church's mind anticipate
Of more majestic fanes, more tuneful tears,
Simplicity more touching, nobler state.
—So the pale bud, where quietly it grows,
Dreams itself on superbly to the rose.

Questions by meditative wisdom ask'd
Must wait for answer till the hour beseems;
Souls were as yet unborn severely task'd
To give interpretation to such dreams;
Shapes by the master-hands as yet unfreed
Slept in the massive marble of the Creed.

The picture slept within the Gospel story;
The music slept on psalms as on a sea;
In a dim dawn before its dawn of glory
The poem slept, a thought that was to be.
The schoolmen's syllogisms, a countless train,
Were folded in that strong and subtle brain.

Christ said, “I need them.” Out the colour sprang,
The music wailed and triumph'd down the aisles,
With voices like the forest's poets sang,
Invisible thoughts grew visible in smiles—
In smiles, and tears, and songs, and the exact
Majestic speech by centuries compact.

Sometimes at morning, or at eventide,
Augustine look'd upon the lake and sky—
Not there the glory of light for which he sigh'd
In all the autumn heaven of Italy.
“Poor shadows are ye—yea, but dimly bright
To me remembering that grander light.

“Ah, light! with its attendants all day long,
Soothing and charming with a magic touch.
It passes not like every measured song,
Its vast and variegated train is such,
Its omnipresent tide of silver flow,
The queen of all the colours of the bow.

“O light! which Isaac and which Jacob saw
Falling upon the dim prophetic scroll,
When with closed eyes they taught the holiest law,
The light that radiates from the luminous soul—
True light thou art of an unsetting sun,
And all who see thee and who love are one.

“And they who turn away and this disdain
Dwell in the flesh as in a shady place;
And yet of this whatever doth remain,
Whate'er half-glooming glimmer touch their face,—
Yea, all that charms—is overflow divine,
And circumfulgence of that light of Thine.

“Yet even here, upon this lawn of rest,
I miss the splendour of my own far ocean,
The various robes which wondrously invest
The evanescent moods of his emotion—
Green of a hundred shades and the fine fall
Of azure tint and pomp purpureal.

“Fair are these waters as these hills are fair,
A fit enfolding for a rustic home;
But who their narrow beauty may compare
With that majestic amplitude of foam?
These azure reaches where the reeds scarce shake
The long calm silver of the Lombard lake,

“They cannot thunder with a voice like his,
They cannot show the immeasurable line,
They have no smoke of white foam o'er the abyss,
No distances that infinitely shine,
No beat of a great heart, no pendulous swing,
No angry flap as of an eagle's wing.

“He has the magic swell, the tinkling fall,
In drowsy days of truce, when skies are pure,
Monotonous, incessant, musical;
And when his trumpets sound for war, the obscure
Æonian eloquence, the vast replies
Voluminous, the interminable sighs.

“The fierceness of him no man shall refrain—
See him with all his water-floods astir,
Like a great king, nigh dispossess'd of his reign,
Staggering with fated hosts, a traveller
Against the wind upon his shoreward track,
His torn white hair tormentedly blown back.

“They have but one sweet look and steadfast tone;
Save when the tempest's battle may be set,
The war of their white passion passes soon;
His the great epic, theirs the canzonet,
And the brief storm-bursts like an angry ode,
And the floods flashing like an episode.”

Another while I seem'd to hear him speak:
They had been calling back weird tales of ghosts,
Stories that grimly float in lands antique,
Faint, fragmentary voices from grey coasts,
And the dim notices we sometimes have
From the far land that lies beyond the grave.

“Now, hear my stories. A few years ago
Lived a boy-notary in Uzala town.
Letter'd full fair the sentences did flow
From his quick pen. At first, youth's rosy crown
He wore with laughter; then, the world abhorr'd,
Like Tertius ever writing in the Lord.

“He sicken'd in the feverish Autumn tide,
And lay for sixteen days 'twixt death and life;
But a few days before he gently died,
And found his consolation after strife,
Faintly, half smiling, sang ere he went to rest,
‘Poculum tuum quám prœclarum est.’

“Then his own hand upon his forehead sign'd
The holy cross, and on his lips did trace;
And on the pillow where his head declined,
Lay the sharp shadow of an old man's face—
So worn it was—but after a little while
Back came the boy-look and the innocent smile.

“Thereafter on the third day his friends came,
To whom the tidings of his death was sent.
The priests he loved were gather'd to proclaim
Redemption's sweet and awful sacrament.
Now two days later was a vision seen.
There rose a palace from a meadow green;

“From it funereal music sounded slow,
A faint sweet scent went out upon the air;
The great gates open'd noiselessly; and lo!
Its halls and floors were golden everywhere,
And passing stately out with sound of chants
An old man stood with two white pursuivants.

“And, ‘Lift me the boy's body for awhile
Heavenward,’ he said, ‘for heavenward was his walk.’
Which done, for peradventure half a mile,
Rose-trees appear'd, a bud on every stalk.
Buds of the roses red and white were they—
Such buds are virgins call'd in Africa.

“And when the priest, his father, came that night,
And threw himself in prayer on the boy's grave,
Lo! in the glory of a silver light
A thousand rosebuds lay on it, and gave
Such attestation as mute things may give
To those whose lives unstain'd by passion live.

“Of roses, my Licentius! singing next,
With Horace sing not, myrtled at his wine;
Be not thy verse with paynimry perplex'd,
But raise thy poesy to strains divine,
And tell how fitly angel hands let fall
Such virgin gifts for spirits virginal.

“Now for a graver tale. In youth I knew
Gennadius, a physician. Over sea
He came to Africa, and not a few
Brought with him of the youth of Italy;
Preferring for his science and his home
The marble streets of Carthage to his Rome.

“From groping in the mechanism of our frame
There was a faltering in the good man's faith;
Not once or twice to him the question came,
Whether for man a life were after death,
Haunting him as he thought of heart and brain,
And track'd the dim tremendous path of pain.

“Yet still he pray'd, ‘O life of every life,
O truth believed in first, then understood,
Give me the prize that is not won by strife;
Give me faith's sweet translucent certitude.’
Then a voice came to him o'er sleep's soft sea,
Saying, ‘Arise, Gennadius, follow me.’

“Him following, to a certain place he fared,
Where on the right there rose a dulcet strain
Beyond all sweetness he had ever heard;
And as he listen'd to that soft refrain,
‘This,’ said the spirit who him had in trust,
‘This is the music of the perfect just.’

“So he awoke, and cried, ‘A dream at best.’
But the next night the very same young man
Came, saying, ‘Gennadius, thou rememberest—
Answer, and I will help thee as I can—
The things thine eyes and ears did lately take;
Saw'st thou and heard'st in vision, or awake?

“‘Can thy cold skill or cunning scalpel find
A way to that impenetrable lair,
The life intense of the impalpable mind?
Or canst thou tell thy purblind scholars where
The ear that hears the swell as of the sea,
The wondrous eyes wherewith thou seest me?

“‘So when thy body lieth in its bed,
Be it the ocean wave, or burial sod,
When thou art of the sleepers men call dead,
That in thee which is deathless may see God.
There may be gloom or gleam for the soul's eyes
In doleful dells, or bowers of Paradise.’”

Often he took the Psalter in his hand,
And turn'd to pages blister'd long with tears,
The balm of broken hearts in every land,
The consolation of a thousand years;
And nobly bold told penitents their bliss,
In gentle images perchance like this—

“Look when thou walkest by the winter strand,
Hath it befallen thee, that through the grey
Of the sea mist, into thy very hand,
Floated a snow-white bird through the salt spray,
Fair, but deep wounded, bubbling from its beak
A thin red foam, with faint infantine shriek?

“Which noting, to thyself thou mad'st a dirge—
‘There is no healing in this hand of mine;
Here must thou die, by the unpitying surge;
Not in the long blue distances divine,
Not in thy little happiness upborne
On seas refulgent with the rosy morn.’

“Such, and so sorely wounded, floating in,
Are penitents beside the sea of time:
Such, and so deep, the crimson stain of sin,
The scar we bear in this ungentle clime.
But lo! a healing Hand our wound above,
Strong as eternity, and soft as love.

“And a sweet voice that unto us hath lent
A new beginning and a nobler flight.
So to poor hearts He gives incontinent
A larger liberty of golden light;
Makes more than expiation for our fault,
And arches over us His bluest vault,

“Saying, ‘I charge thee, O my wounded bird,
Soar nearer to the heaven where'er thou art;
Let all the breezes by thy plumes be stirr'd;
I heal thee through and through, O bleeding heart!
I ask thy song, and give thee voice to sing;
I bid thee soar, and give thee strength of wing.

“‘What I command I give my mourners still,
Give the delight that doth the victory gain;
Give first, and then command them as I will,
Sweet penitence taking pleasure in its pain.
I bid thee set those psalms of sorrow seven
To the allegro of the airs of Heaven.’”

And yet another time methought one read
The gentle miracle of the Marriage Feast.
“Ours be the sweetness of the wine,” he said,
“The bridal benediction of our Priest;
And in the silence of our hearts be heard
The voiceless words of Him who is the Word.

“Each vineyard is a purple curtain screen,
Whereon God's colours we may ever trace;
God's usual is man's always, and is seen
Paled by too constant light to common place;
And scarcely do our drowsy hearts revere
The miracle of vintage every year.

“God is not bound by laws Himself has made;
Water is not less wonderful than wine;
God's living finger weaves a pattern'd braid,
Yet in full liberty of love divine,
And still free notes of a new music dwell
In Heaven's sweet novelty of miracle.

“Lo! the world's gifts are goodliest at first—
The rapturous enjoyment, the rich sense,
The revelling draught—thereafter the fierce thirst,
The dark'ning sky, the passionate impotence.
But Thou hast kept Thy light for our eclipse—
Kept Thy good wine for pale and dying lips.”

And once, when near its end their idlesse drew,
It chanced the afternoon was mild and fine.
The Master cried, “What ho! the sky is blue.
Come, poet, read the verse thou call'st divine.
Nay, and I will not blame thee overmuch
If thou mix with it thine own gentle touch.

“Thy Virgil bring. With him thou shalt bring flowers,
Odours emparadised in some fadeless phrase.
Thou shalt set bees a-humming in the bowers,
And make us weep for old immortal days;
And, pagan though he be, yet shall we bless
God's gift in him of exquisite tenderness.

“Fling, then, o'er us the great magician's spell,
Read with meet cadence while the eve is clear
Tell o'er again what our hearts know so well.
The moonlit sea shall quiver as we hear—
In one six-beated line a tale be stored,
A garden gather'd in one perfect word.”

To whom Licentius. “Lately I was thinking
Of the delicious love-tale Virgil wrought—
Out of his cup my spirit had been drinking;
Rather, I sank into his ocean thought.
And with the tide I swam that summer sea,
And all its waves grew buoyant under me.

“There was a murmur in my ears and heart,
Whereof the larger music came from him;
But of mine own there was a little part,
Little indeed to his, and harsh and dim.
Of Homer's mighty song and high intent
Sonorous echo, theft magnificent

“He made; but ah! I marr'd whate'er I stole—
He the rich-fruited scion, the stem I
Of the poor pomegranate, lending to the whole
Only the red tint of my poverty—
He like the bird's white wing above the river,
I the white shadow that can reach it never.

“Listen! I breath'd our soft Numidian air;
I saw Elissa to the hunting go;
The golden-netted sunshine of her hair
Flicker'd in sunshine as it fell below.
The golden baldrick flung she round her breast,
The golden fibula clasp'd her purple vest.

“With yellow jasper stone his sword hilt starr'd,
He how majestic, like a prince indeed,
How stately she, how regal of regard!
A huntress on her white Massylian steed.
And, though the jocund morning waxes late,
Herself impatient makes her lover wait,—

“Who looks like Phœbus, when he Cynthus treads,
After the Lycian snows and streams ice-mute,
Walking with murmurous rush of river-beds;
While heav'n is silver o'er him, and underfoot
Anemones spring, and daffodils are born
For golden tassels to his bugle horn.

“Ah me! how beautiful to her he seem'd,
To whom such fascination there was given.
The mountain-tops whereon his boyhood dream'd,
Had forests haunted by the hosts of Heaven.
Out of the sunset sky ablaze with flame,
Out of the silver silences he came;

“Came with the music of the Idalian pines
Round him, with whisper'd message from the star,
His mother's herald o'er the mountain lines,
Until dawn steeps her pure pale primrose bar
In rosiest colour'd radiance ever born
Out of the ivory palaces of morn;—

“Came with such touch of moonlight on his sail,
From such resplendent distances of foam,
With all the loveliness of such a tale,
The spell of such a visionary home;
And finely floated round that princely form
A mystery of the battle and the storm.

“Full soon she sobs, ‘Stay if my prayer avails;
Train me to bear the last long parting thus;
Stay till our Afric wild-flow'rs fill the dales,
Till yon waves look less strange and dangerous,
Till I shall discipline this poor heart so
That with the swallows I may let thee go.

“‘Ah! an thou fleest, then my wraith be found
Where'er thy fateful footsteps yet shall stand—
My very shadow shall be gold-encrown'd,
My very shadow shall be sad and grand;
My shadow haunt thee on each sea and lawn,
Mute in the moonlight, dying in the dawn.’

“Perchance he would have stay'd, but not in vain
The calling to our purpose on us lies.
Our lives are links in a remorseless chain.
Of what avail to her that his heart sighs
‘Elissa, and a Carthaginian home.’
When Heaven and all its influence will have Rome?

“Soon this hath passed. The parting all is o'er,
And all her passionate reproach of him,
And all the watching from the salt seashore
Of the sail fading o'er the ocean rim—
Of the sail fading on the cruel sea,
On the false wave not half so false as he.

“Night, gentle night, rush'd from the Afric sky.
Head under wing the birds of wave and air
Slept, hushing all their sweet small poesy.
If we have our forgetfulness of care,
So have those little hearts in bower and brake,
And the still dreamland of the starlit lake.

“But she her fiery bed premeditates,
And ‘Let him see the smoke, a far off breath,’
She wails; ‘a blur on Summer's lustrous gates,
And bear with him the omen of my death—
Ah no! my poor heart be, till it wax dim,
A taper on a shrine, and burn for him.

“‘And if so be that Herè in her ruth
Send Iris with the hopes and hues of heav'n
To hang above my death, I pray in sooth
That half the sweetness may to him be given,
And half my rainbow melt away in rose
And violet on the ocean where he goes.’

“This passed away—and then meseem'd to tread
This underworld in visionary sleep.
Æneas-like I visited the dead.
Behold! a spirit pass'd, who seem'd to weep
Not hopelessly. ‘Young Poet!’ did he say,
Men call'd me Maro while I saw the day.

“‘Each of us poets hath his proper gift;
Not all the gift to use the gift aright.
Red cups of battle or of wine they lift
Wildly, and stain what should be lily white.
Each bloom has thus its cankerworm within,
Each splendid line is thus a splendid sin.

“‘And others sang high strains with mean intent
Or for the tyrant of their little time,
Or gave to hatred what for love was meant;
Less than immortal made immortal rhyme,
So that the satire with the years has grown
A fossil scorpion with a sting of stone.

“‘The Latin tongue was lent me at my will.
Lo! the flowers fade upon the summer leas
The storm of battle passes, and is still;
But sorrow is a deeper thing than these—
Sorrow for human things lasts through the years
I was the first that chose the gift of tears.

“‘I used it as an instrument to express
Beyond all battle camps, and courts of kings,
The majesty of human tenderness,
Sweet ruth for the vicissitudes of things—
The subtle pathos, the magnetic touch,
The broken voice that tells the heart so much.

“‘Once the dim prophecies floating round the earth
I gather'd—thornless roses, stormless seas,
Meadows in blossom for a better birth,
Mother and child, nova progenies—
All this I twined for all the race of man
In higher strains than aught Sicilian.

“‘And is it nothing that I taught all this,
That through the world's confusion sweetly smiled
Before me the conception of our bliss,
The happiest Mother, the divinest Child,
That scarcely once or twice did touch impure
Fall on my virginal emportraiture?’

“Then with low voice he ask'd, ‘And is there hope?
Or must I wander always—lost, lost, lost?’
Out like a rose the dawn began to ope,
This side and that the clouds were crimson cross'd,
And manifold voices round us seem'd to say,
‘Yea, there is hope, but it is far away.’

“Ah! not so far—for low and winning sweet,
‘Venite, invenietis,’ some one said;
Like breath of balm upon the heart it beat.
Light ran along the region of the dead.
The echoes multiplied from east to west,
‘Venite ad me omnes—suave est.’”

Licentius ceased. To Elissa's tale at even
A hundred times within the twenty years
Augustine's tender heart had duly given
The tributary offering of his tears.
Yet,—while the boy's big drops of ruth he chid,
The salt dew trembled on the Master's lid.

And Monica thought how first she read the tale
In her Numidian home at eventide,
Thought of Æneas with each sunlit sail,
Thought of Elissa with each wave that died.
The saint perhaps condemned it, but alas!
The woman sigh'd, and said how sweet it was.

As to the boy's deep ruth and tender prayer
For Virgil, be there silence grave and wise.
The mother of the Master was aware
How the first woodland walk through which we rise
To the precipitous mountain peak of truth
Is love—the sunlit heresy of youth.

The holiday is o'er—the rest is done.
Cassiciácum lies in sunny mist;
They turn toward it, praying every one,
“To Verecundus do thou give, O Christ!
For that sweet rest beneath the happy skies
The fadeless greenery of Thy Paradise.”

Never was yet to-day whose incompleteness
Fail'd not in somewhat of the bliss it brought,
Till it inherited the dim faint sweetness,
The immaculate azure of the sky of thought;
Till we baptized the dead hours far away
By the ethereal name of yesterday.

So “My one holiday,” oft the old man cried;
“When shall the Bishop's holiday come again?”
When the fierce Huns are on the mountain-side,
And he lies sick to death in August; when
The cactus flowers of Hippo 'neath the blue
Are steep'd with crimson blood-drops through and through;

When through the date groves in the scarce-lit dales
Over the Seybous and his dreaming calms,
The importunate sweetness of the nightingales
Comes to the old man falling asleep with psalms;
And, a thin thread of scarlet, morning breaks
Silently on the Atlantéan peaks.