Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

Answering the daily need,
With brand and buckler to conquer or bleed;
Or for the burgher's watch so drear,
Filling the wallet with good cheer,
Or in the booth or market-stand
Where moil befits both tongue and hand:
But work is heavy from morn to eve,
With sorrow still watching behind like a reeve,
And the only shelter sure and fair
Is the cloister and cowl to the man of care,
To the man upon whom the great black hand
Of chastening waxeth tight, whose head
Is bowed, so he no more can stand
In the guild-hall he aforetime led.
Nor less to him who wickedly
Seeketh temptations, the lusts of the eye
And the pride of life; for surely God
Lends the heart a worm, the back a rod,
To punish those forgetting Him;
And His punishments are grim!
Abasing the haughty in velvet and fur,
Who hold their foreheads against the thunder,
And laugh to see the patched poor wonder,
Who travel with riders before and behind,
Riding over the halt and blind,
Who empty the stoup with the wassailer,
Over the chamber of the dying,—
Who wear the night with dice and lying,

Lying and cursing over the dice,
And to the chirp of the violette,
With a headless amorette
Dance until the cock crows thrice.

There was a time when Saints were rife,
Whose cross was ever their staff of life;
From Camelot to Egypt's river,
Blessings fell from Gabriel's quiver;
Nor was it wonderful to see
The holy rood stoop down to greet
The worshipper whose heart was sweet,
Whose deeds and thoughts did well agree,—
Who never dropt his beads to scratch,
Though his cassock was as coarse as thatch:
This age was likened to the sun
Upholding life since time begun.

Then glorious still, though glorious less,
The second age of holiness,
Was likened to the harvest-moon,
Whose sweet white face doth wane so soon.

Then came the third last age of light;
Darker it was, yet grand and bright,
Like the company of stars by night.

But sun, and moon, and stars are gone,
And we the watchers left alone

With no more cheer than candlewick
Through a horn lantern, yellow and thick.
So now in the race, for one who wins,
Six shall stumble with wounded shins;
For the rood is stiff whoever kneels,
And God never stops His chariot wheels,
Nor looks out of His narrow window,
Over the drifts and steeps of snow;
But Satan for a thousand years
Has gotten a lease of our hopes and fears—
To catch men's souls by their eyes and ears.
Let us everyone beware
Little faith or overcaring,
Pride of heart or overdaring,
Lest we come within his snare.

In after years on that spot grew
Cloisters of stone all fair and new:
And Camaldules at least five-score
Lived where these few had housed before;
Then in the guest-hall oft was told
This story of the times of old,
And of a beggar-man, who lay
With crutch and cup by night and day,
Begging and muttering before
Saint Peter's great west door.
This beggar, when aught was flung in his cup,
If 'twas not silver would grumble and grutch,

And strive to raise his body up,
To reach the almoner with his crutch!
Then as the midnight struck, they said,
He lay stretched out as if he were dead,
When a hornèd stranger, strong and grim,
Through the locked city-gate came toward him,
And took his daily spoils away.
Some thought him a Saint, and gave him food
Day by day, as Christians should;
But others averred that Satan had
Sworn him his slave and driven him mad,
And that his name was Anthony.
But whether he was the same who fled
From his cell that night can never be said.