Part 23

THE church flings forth a battled shade Over the moon-blanched sward; The church; my gift; whereto I paid My all in hand and hoard: Lavished my gains With stintless pains To glorify the Lord.

I squared the broad foundations in Of ashlared masonry; I moulded mullions thick and thin, Hewed fillet and ogee; I circleted Each sculptured head With nimb and canopy.

III

I called in many a craftsmaster To fix emblazoned glass, To figure Cross and Sepulchre On dossal, boss, and brass. My gold all spent, My jewels went To gem the cups of Mass.

I borrowed deep to carve the screen And raise the ivoried Rood; I parted with my small demesne To make my owings good. Heir-looms unpriced I sacrificed, Until debt-free I stood.

So closed the task. “Deathless the Creed Here substanced!” said my soul: “I heard me bidden to this deed, And straight obeyed the call. Illume this fane, That not in vain I build it, Lord of all!”

But, as it chanced me, then and there Did dire misfortunes burst; My home went waste for lack of care, My sons rebelled and curst; Till I confessed That aims the best Were looking like the worst.

VII

Enkindled by my votive work No burning faith I find; The deeper thinkers sneer and smirk, And give my toil no mind; From nod and wink I read they think That I am fool and blind.

VIII

My gift to God seems futile, quite; The world moves as erstwhile; And powerful wrong on feeble right Tramples in olden style. My faith burns down, I see no crown; But Cares, and Griefs, and Guile.

So now, the remedy? Yea, this: I gently swing the door Here, of my fane—no soul to wis— And cross the patterned floor To the rood-screen That stands between The nave and inner chore.

The rich red windows dim the moon, But little light need I; I mount the prie-dieu, lately hewn From woods of rarest dye; Then from below My garment, so, I draw this cord, and tie

One end thereof around the beam Midway ’twixt Cross and truss: I noose the nethermost extreme, And in ten seconds thus I journey hence— To that land whence No rumour reaches us.

XII

Well: Here at morn they’ll light on one Dangling in mockery Of what he spent his substance on Blindly and uselessly! . . . “He might,” they’ll say, “Have built, some way. A cheaper gallows-tree!”

THE LOST PYX A MEDIÆVAL LEGEND {457}

SOME say the spot is banned; that the pillar Cross-and-Hand Attests to a deed of hell; But of else than of bale is the mystic tale That ancient Vale-folk tell.

Ere Cernel’s Abbey ceased hereabout there dwelt a priest, (In later life sub-prior Of the brotherhood there, whose bones are now bare In the field that was Cernel choir).

One night in his cell at the foot of yon dell The priest heard a frequent cry: “Go, father, in haste to the cot on the waste, And shrive a man waiting to die.”

Said the priest in a shout to the caller without, “The night howls, the tree-trunks bow; One may barely by day track so rugged a way, And can I then do so now?”

No further word from the dark was heard, And the priest moved never a limb; And he slept and dreamed; till a Visage seemed To frown from Heaven at him.

In a sweat he arose; and the storm shrieked shrill, And smote as in savage joy; While High-Stoy trees twanged to Bubb-Down Hill, And Bubb-Down to High-Stoy.

There seemed not a holy thing in hail, Nor shape of light or love, From the Abbey north of Blackmore Vale To the Abbey south thereof.

Yet he plodded thence through the dark immense, And with many a stumbling stride Through copse and briar climbed nigh and nigher To the cot and the sick man’s side.

When he would have unslung the Vessels uphung To his arm in the steep ascent, He made loud moan: the Pyx was gone Of the Blessed Sacrament.

Then in dolorous dread he beat his head: “No earthly prize or pelf Is the thing I’ve lost in tempest tossed, But the Body of Christ Himself!”

He thought of the Visage his dream revealed, And turned towards whence he came, Hands groping the ground along foot-track and field, And head in a heat of shame.