Egypt :: :: University of Virginia Library

St. Lawrence's Day and the dawn of day,
And my Lord and his hounds are up and away,
Though not yet has the plough-share proclaimed it the time
When hounds in cry make a cheerful chime.

But my Lord enjoyed, at the rising sun,
To take his hounds for a pleasant run,
To keep them healthy in wind and limb,
The furrows to cross and the streams to swim.

By meadow and wood they were jogging along,
When music they heard and a choral song,
In the Church of St. Lawrence, by Caversfield village,
Where Buckingham yeomen tend cattle and tillage.

“Stay, stay!” cried my Lord, as once did Canute,
When the Ely monks sang and the oarsmen were mute;
“For neither in London nor Oxford,” said he,
“Can they chant so divinely, with such solemn glee.”

So they listened and listened, and even the hounds
Seemed attentive to hear those angelical sounds,
And still the sweet anthem came not to a close,
But its harmonies spread like the leaves of a rose.

Till my Lord turned for home, since no more might he hear
Lest his Lady be filled with foreboding and fear,
And he cried, “It is strange that I never heard say
How Caversfield sings on St. Lawrence's Day.”

But from that day to this might it never be known
Who those singers could be who were chanting alone,
For the parson declared, in a tone of some scorn,
That no service was held on St. Lawrence's morn.

Yet I venture to think that if sounds can pierce through
From the world of lost spirits, as some say they do,
It is right and in reason, it must be confessed,
That some should glide in from the world of the blest.