Page:Pleasant Memories of Pleasant Lands.djvu/177

 152 YORK MINSTER.

Whether the chevron- work, and foliage knots

Are of the third or second Gothic school ;

The builder knows, perchance, the school-boy too.

But poets cobweb line hath ever failed

To measure these aright, and set them forth

With Euclid s skill. Go see them for yourselves.

Yet can we people every vacant niche,

And mend the headless statue, and restore

The rusted relics of a buried age,

And spread the velvet pall the moth did eat

All fresh and lustrous o er the ancient dead.

So be ye patient with us, and not ask

The admeasurement of transept or of nave,

But let us perch, like bird, where er we choose,

And weave our fleeting song, as best we may.

Fain would I tell you, what a world of sound

Came from that pealing organ, when its soul,

Mixed with the chanter s breath, bade arch and aisle

Reecho with celestial melody.

Its mighty tide bore off the weeds of care

And sands of vanity, and made the words,

Such common words as man doth speak to man,

All tame and trifling to the immortal soul.

I would not say devotion may not be

As heartfelt, in the humblest village church

That flecks the green ; but yet, it seemeth fit,

That those, who thus, from age to age, have been

Unresting heralds of the Eternal Name,

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