University of Virginia Library

Down in the cove, where the fisher folk
Huddled beneath the lighthouse rock,
There was a dainty little Kirk
Of the old faithful mason-work,—
It might have been choir, or pillared nave,
Wreck of a church, by the breaking wave,
And a great cross on the gable stood;
And all within it was fair and good,—
Marble altar, and carven font,
And silver vessels, as were wont,
Under the great black holy Rood.

Long it had been but a ruin grey,
Roofless, and wasting in slow decay,
The mullions all from the windows gone;
The carven niche, and the fine-scrolled stone
By nettles and long grass hid from view;
And the font had been broken and overthrown,
And pillar and arch were crumbling too;
And the cunning fox had made his lair,
And the rook and the jay had nestled there.
Some laid the blame upon Knox's wrath;
Some held it was swept from the Covenant's path;
Some charged it to Cromwell's Ironclads;
And some to a raid of the High-land lads.
But they who had searched the matter well
Read how a great Lord lost a bet,
And tore off the roof, and melted the bell,
And sold them to pay his gambling debt,
After the new Kirk was built away
Landward, far from the little bay.
And all agreed that a Kirk was there
From the days that the Culdee launched his boat,
And came with the voice of psalm and prayer,
And gospel true to the people brought
From the lone Isle of saints that lay
Where ghostly mists on the waters slept,
But God shone out of the mists by day,
And spake in dreams to them when they slept,
And ever their souls in quiet kept.

So the good Dean, when he came there,
Curate or priest, long years ago,
Loving a Kirk that was old and fair
As the ivy loves round its walls to grow,
Had clung to it with a longing heart,
And with his own hands cleared a part,
Casting out nettles and grass and earth,
Till he came to the pavement of solid stone;
And whatever of beauty he found, or worth,
He sought out its place, and fitted it on.
Then with his savings, year by year,
He mended a bit, and roofed it in,
Living himself on sorriest cheer
This trophy again for his Church to win:
And now it stood there fair to see
In lines of graceful symmetry;
A bell once more from the belfry rung,
And matin and vesper were daily sung,
And the organ pealed, and the common prayer
Was sweetly toned to the fishers there.
Yet all the wealth of his worldly gear
Was less than three-score pounds a year.

Near by the Kirk was a cottage small,
With a red-tiled roof, and a white-washed wall,
A garden plot that was bright with flowers,
An old sun-dial to tell the hours,
Some carven stones that were broken quite,
And might not fit in their places right,
Yet were too sacred to be thrown
Among the rubbish of common stone,
With a green wood-paling to fence all round,—
These told where the Dean a home had found.
It was not other than all the rest
Of the fishermen's huts that there were seen,
Save only that it was neat and clean,
With an attic chamber for a guest:
But the Dean's own bed was in the wall,
Hid behind volumes, great and tall,
In the little room where he read and wrote,
And did the work that a pastor ought.
There on the shelves were folios piled;
There Benedictine fathers smiled
In snowy vellum, crimson-lettered—
These, he said, were his golden mines—
And high on the upper shelves were scattered
Big quartos too of the great divines,
And tables and chairs and floor were littered—
With books that were scored with scarlet lines;
For he was a classic ripe and good,
And loved the old wine in the seasoned wood,
But all translations were bottled and dead,
With an evil taste of the cork, he said.

The other room was a kitchen clean,
And there no woman was ever seen,
But once a day, about noon, his man
Lit up the fire for a little can—
If it were not a fast, and a fast, at least,
Came twice a week to this humble priest—
And made for him pulse or porridge sweet,
But the Church's Feasts had sodden meat;
And if a guest by chance was there,
There might be a glass of mildest ale;
And an evening pipe to soothe his care
Was the one luxury did not fail.
Yet was he healthy and strong, nor kept
Ever his bed for a day, or slept
After the dawn, but rose to pray
For his fisher lads in the stormy bay.

A tall, lean form with lank grey hair,
Bushy his eyebrows, and grey his eyes,
Deep sunk in a face that was pale and spare;
And he dressed in a threadbare lowly guise.
One apron had served him all his days,
His newest hat, it was ten years old,
His well-brushed coat had a shining glaze,
And his great thick shoes had been patched and soled;
White was his lawn on the Sabbath morn,
But half was darning, and all was worn
Into so fine a filament
It scarce could be handled without a rent.
Yet had he ever so stately an air
That rich and poor did understand,
Whatsoever his raiment were,
He was a man to hold command,
And none might slight him in all the land.

Old was the world in which he lived,
Old the evils at which he grieved,
Old were the things that most he cherished,
Old were his hopes too, past and perished.
He held that it was a sin to own
Other than Stuart to sit on the throne,
And still did his faith intact remain
Now that there was not a Stuart to reign.
Therefore a strict non-juror he
All the years of his youth had been,
Doing his constant ministry
In hidden ways, and in spots unseen,
Praying for him who in exile lay
“Over the hills and far away.”
Now law and order he kept, 'tis true,
Giving to Cæsar Cæsar's due,
But the loyal heart that would have shed
Its blood for the kings of the ancient line,
Clung to the memories of the dead,
And the vanished rule of the Right divine.
He fasted still for the martyred Charles,
And him who perished on Magus moor,
And held that the Parliament men were carles,
The devil pricked on to delude the poor,
And that gallant Dundee did right to maul
The Westland Whigs who were rebels all.
But for the new world, and its ways,
And all the great hopes of the latter days,
Their science and its expanding views,
New-fangled craving for latest news,
And workmen striking for higher wage,
And all that mostly our thoughts engage—
For them he kept strictly a yearly Fast,
Each year bitterer than the last—
It fell when Culloden day begins—
And he called it the Fast of All the Sins.

So, true to his own ideal, there
He chaunted the psalm, and read the prayer,
And gathered the lore of ancient times
From Latin Fathers and Latin rhymes,
Till scholars came from far and near
This primitive Pastor to revere;
But hardly ever a point was found
Where he touched the life that went on around,
Moved it, or felt with it as it spoke,
Or heeded how its passions woke,
Or how its bubbles swelled and broke.