Musa Verticordia :: :: University of Virginia Library

Here, by this black, forbidding coast,
Dwelt one who heard the heavenly host
Singing in every wind that blows,
In wave that breaks or stream that flows,

And surely deemed that love divine,
Whose tendrils all his church entwine,
Is not too distant to be won
By Nature's humblest orison.

Wherefore amid these moors and steeps
His spirit ever laughs and weeps,
Weeps with the storm or laughs with glee
For rhythmic laughter of the sea;

No longer mute, the Token Stream
Repeats the pathos of his dream;
His dirge for days remembered not
Is echoed from Morwenna's grot;

And pilgrims, when they pause to con
The sacred well-house of Saint John,

Whose fountain feeds the lustral bowl
Wherein is laved each infant soul,

Or linger by St. Nectan's Kieve,
Watching the foamy waters leave
Their mossy cave, to seek for rest
In Severn Sea's unslumbering breast,

Or stray where rushy Tamar spills
Her new-born flood in slender rills,
Unguessing in her modest source
The goodly channel of her course,

Shall hear the river murmuring low
The melodies of Morwenstow,
While distant surges chime and toll
Antiphony from sound or shoal,

Shall hear the whisper of the well,
The clamour of the torrent, tell
Of him who had strange power to teach
Their wordless voices human speech.

Written on the occasion of the unveiling of a window in Morwenstow Church, in memory of the Rev. R. S. Hawker, on September 8, 1904.