The Finding of The Book and Other Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

Late, late, in the October afternoon,
The monks sat listening spellbound in the choir;
The voice went ringing on, a lovely tune,
A touch of pathos, or a shaft of fire.
The sunset flared blood-red, the wild marsh-hen
Shriek'd through the long reed lances of the fen.

Within was spring. Voice to low breezes set
Through the greenwood, over the mountain's brink—
Voice of Christ's dove, His undefilèd—yet,
Not so much sweet itself of song, I think,
As the soft sign whereby we understand
That all things sweet are gathering in the land.

‘O that some saint might come to us, and teach
From his rich certainty our poor perhaps!

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Yea, by his death preach what I cannot preach—
How earth's hopes scare at last, as when there taps
Some broken branch of bloom through storm and rain,
Like death's white finger on the windowpane.’

Scarce was the sermon done, the blessing o'er,
A train of horsemen halted at the gate.
‘My Lord the Abbot,’ said the janitor,
‘One like an angel comes to us full late,
Primate of a green island o'er the sea;
His name, too, is an angel's—Malachy.’

Four or five days flow'd on in fair discourse;
Gracious his speech and stately his regard.
Oft would he warn them with prophetic force
That he was come to them to meet the Lord.
He rode to Clairvaux in October mist,
The Feast-day of St. Luke the Evangelist.

111

Something of fever flush'd his pallid cheek;
To Bernard mournfully a little while
Out of his spirit's trouble did he speak
Of certain tribesmen in his restless isle.
‘Patience,’ he cried, ‘that tree of hidden root,
And bitter rind, that hath so sweet a fruit,

‘Be the good guerdon of the bishop's heart,
The turbulent sheep who shepherds in that land.
Full often must he bear, with breaking heart,
The long ingratitude, the plot well plann'd,
The deep suspicion hid with laughing eye,
The poison'd dagger sheath'd with flattery.

‘They do possess such imitative grace,
Such exquisite sympathy when needed most,
Such fine emotion feign'd with mobile face,
Such passionate speech—withal the enormous boast,
The shallowness of hearts that seem so deep,
The candid lie that makes you laugh and weep.

112

‘O grand traditions, forged me any morn,
Ethereal sentiment for solid gold,
Vows soon unvow'd, oaths laughingly forsworn,
Facts no historian happens to have told,
Fair, faint, false legends of a golden spring,
A past that never was a present thing.

‘The thrush sings sweetest with his speckled breast
Against the hawthorn jags, their poets say;
His loveliest notes are agony exprest,
So that the little pain seems rapture: they,
So sharp, so soft, so pitiless, so forlorn,
Sing like the thrush, and stab you like the thorn.

‘God's pardon rest on them. All that is o'er,
The time of my departure is at hand,
And here my rest shall be for evermore,
Far from Armagh and from that fatal land.’
So he; yet still his frame was full of grace,
And death seem'd distant from that comely face.

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Yet on All Saints, ‘Behold,’ the leeches said,
‘Before to-morrow must the Archbishop die’;
Her loftiest rite the monastery made,
And sang her music of festivity.
Thankless the task, inopportune the art,
To sing sweet songs to sorrow's heavy heart.

And sorrow was in that Cistercian home—
Sorrow untuned the chant of choir and priest.
One only tasted of Christ's honeycomb,
One only knew the fulness of the feast.
All Saints to Malachy was but the small
Dim vesper of his glorious festival.

‘Lover and friend are darkness—light within.
Love is eternal; and I love my Lord,
And love you all; haply my love may win
Somewhat from Thee, O Christ! whom I regard
Humanly pitying, for man's heart is Thine;
Divinely helping, being Thyself divine.

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‘Let me not fall into the bitter pain
Of death eterne for any pains of death.
Let Christ's omnipotence manifested reign,
Making omnipotent one who languisheth,
Whose thought and will and memory growing dim,
A trinity of misery, call to Him.’

So, near the twilight was the veil withdrawn.
Into a morn-red sea did his sail sweep—
A sea not dim with twilight, flushed with dawn.
If grey mists melt, if God's belovèd sleep,
Why search the sea-mists when he sails no more?
Why weep for him whose weeping all is o'er?

Then, though all look'd to see the fair soul sail
Into the mystery o'er life's furthest line,
The moment that it cross'd might none prevail
To note for a memorial, or divine
The very moment on God's clock to tell
When all was over, and when all was well.

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Only the Abbot softly said—‘Behold,
Life is a sea, whose waters ever swing;
A wood, whose leaves like bells are ever toll'd.
A tranquil God makes tranquil everything.
Here is no trembling leaf, no wrinkling wave,
But such serenity as sleepers have.

‘Sleep, brother, sleep, until the golden year;
Until thou sing, “Let us arise and see
If the vine flourish—whether the grapes appear,
If all the red buds gem the Passion tree?
Till on our hearts shall breathe a better day,
And chase the clouds of human things away.’

Ah! never sorrow comes that comes alone.
Deep calleth unto deep, and wave to wave;
Saint calleth unto saint, and ere hath grown
Grass on one sod, there is another grave.
The angels of one deathbed come again—
White clouds returning after God's own rain.

At Clairvaux on his way back from Rome to Armagh.

The unpleasing character here given is very much softened from the original. Writing from several years of personal knowledge, I can say with entire truth that the people of every element in Armagh—Celts, English, or Scots—are distinguished by mutual kindliness and social as well as personal virtue.