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XLVII.

A Hymn to the Holy Spirit

73

XLVIII.

“Adora et Tace”

76

XLIX.

The Refuge of the Wandering

77

L.

The Legend of St. Christopher

79

LI.

The Light Invisible

81

LII.

Onward

83

LIII.

The Faithful Departed

84

LIV.

Lethe

86

LV.

Ave Atque Vale

88

I
THE DARK AGES

Men call you “dark.”  What factory then blurred the light
Of golden suns, when nothing blacker than the shades
Of coming rain climbed up the heather-mantled height?
               While the air
   Breathed all the scents of all untrodden flowers,
   And brooks poured silver through the glimmering glades,
      Then sweetly wound through virgin ground.
         Must all that beauty pass?
         And must our pleasure trains
Like foul eruptions belch upon the mountain head?
   Must we perforce build vulgar villa lanes,
         And on sweet fields of grass
The canting scutcheons of a cheating commerce spread?

Men call you “dark.”  Did that faith see with cobwebbed eyes,
That built the airy octagon on Ely’s hill,
And Gloucester’s Eastern wall that woos the topaz skies,
               Where the hymn
      Angelic “Glory be to God on high,
      And peace on earth to men who feel good will,”
         Might softly sound God’s throne around?
            Is that a perfect faith
            Which pew-filled chapels rears,
   Where Gothic fronts of stone mask backs of ill-baked bricks,
      And where the frothy fighting preacher fears,
            As peasants fear a wraith,
His deacon’s frown or some just change in politics?

Men call you “dark.”  Was Chaucer’s speech a muddy stream,
The language born of Norman sun and Saxon snow?
Was Langland’s verse or Wyclif’s prose mere glow-worm’s gleam?
               And the tales
      Of Arthur’s sword and of the holy Grail,
      And Avalon, the isle where no storms blow:
         From such romance did no light glance?
            Have we not heard a tongue,
            Whose words the Saxon thralls
   Would scorn to speak above their muck-rake and their fork,
      The speech of barrack-rooms and music-halls,
            Where every fool has flung
The rotten refuse of Calcutta and New York?

Men call you “dark.”  But chivalry and honour stand
As words that you, not we, did fashion, when the need
Of food beyond the price of gold awoke our land.
               For you taught
      Inconstancy is like a standard lost;
      And we who prove untrue in love or deed
         Will doubly shame an ancient name.
            Your robes were not all white,
            Your soul was not a sea
   Where all the crystal rivulets of God found room:
      But we must often to your lessons flee,
            Our truth with yours unite,
Before we meet the holy dayspring of the doom.

II
THE BELLS OF VENICE

Ring out again that faltering strain,
      Cease not so soon,
Sweet peal that brought to me the thought
Of some deep shadowed English lane
      Across the blue lagoon.

The water street where oarsmen meet
      And shout ahead,
The glowing quay, all noise and glee,
Seemed hallowed as when angels’ feet
      Touched Jacob’s stony bed.

On pearly dome and princely home
      Day’s glory dies:
Once more the bells’ low murmur tells
That faith is not a line of foam
      Nor life a bridge of sighs.

III
AN ANCIENT CHURCH

So little dost thou seem of common earth,
So much of spirit doth thy fabric show,
That we, who watch thee through the azure glow,
Might deem that with the stars thou cam’st to birth.

So sweet and true the voices from thy spire,
Which bless the day’s betrothal unto night,
That when they falter with