Clarel/Part 3/Canto 9

9. Of Monasteries
The lake ink-black mid slopes of snow-- The dead-house for the frozen, barred-- And the stone hospice; chill they show Monastic in thy pass, Bernard. Apostle of the Alps storm-riven, How lone didst build so near the heaven! Anchored in seas of Nitria's sand, The desert convent of the Copt-- No aerolite can more command

The sense of dead detachment, dropped All solitary from the sky. The herdsmen of Olympus lie In summer when the eve is won Viewing white Spermos lower down, The mountain-convent; and winds bear The chimes that bid the monks to prayer; Nor man-of-war-hawk sole in sky O'er lonely ship sends lonelier cry. The Grand Chartreuse with crystal peaks Mid pines--the wintry Paradise Of soul which but a Saviour seeks-- The mountains round all slabbed with ice; May well recall the founder true, St. Bruno, who to heaven has gone And proved his motto--that whereto Each locked Carthusian yet adheres: Troubled I was, but spake I none; I kept in mind the eternal years. And Vallambrosa--in, shut in; And Montserrat--enisled aloft; With many more the verse might win, Solitudes all, austere or soft.

But Saba! Of retreats where heart Longing for more than downy rest, Fit place would find from world apart, Saba abides the loneliest: Saba, that with an eagle's theft Seizeth and dwelleth in the cleft. Aloof the monks their aerie keep, Down from their hanging cells they peep Like samphire-gatherers o'er the bay Faint hearing there the hammering deep Of surf that smites the ledges gray.

But up and down, from grot to shrine, Along the gorge, hard by the brink File the gowned monks in even line,

And never shrink! With litany or dirge they wend Where nature as in travail dwells; And the worn grots and pensive dells In wail for wail responses send-- Echoes in plaintive syllables. With mystic silvery brede divine, Saint Basil's banner of Our Lord (In lieu of crucifix adored BY Greeks which images decline) Stained with the five small wounds and red, Down through the darkling gulf is led-- BY night ofttimes, while tapers glow Small in the depths, as stars may show Reflected far in well profound.

Full fifteen hundred years have wound Since cenobite first harbored here; The bones of men, deemed martyrs crowned, To fossils turn in mountain near; Nor less while now lone scribe may write, Even now, in living dead of night, In Saba's lamps the flames aspire-- The votaries tend the far-transmitted fire.