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45
CROMER ABBEY
Here are the crimson flowers of sleep,But in this marsh may no man reap;
More barren than the sea this land,
More sterile than the ocean sand.
And league on league is flat and dead,
O'erflowing all with poppies red,
For evermore unharvested.
Yet springing from sterility
The abbey rises to the sky,
Fissured by years and rent with time,
And yet bare-headed and sublime.
More beautiful than any flower
Stands from the waste the reverend tower,
A ruin, lonely to the air;
Massy, memorial, and bare.
Where now are they, those holy men,
Who laboured the unyielding fen?
Who leaning on a spade would pray,
And toiling carol all the day,
46
Or hymn uplifting to the sky?
Some say that still at deep midnight
You may behold a solemn sight
Of cowléd men in order go,
Passing in silence to and fro;
Till once again a bell is rung
And once the ancient anthem sung;
Then all the throng will disappear,
Leaving the dreariness more drear.
Howe'er that be; now but remains
The unpeopled flatness of the plains.
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