Page:Poems, Volume 1, Coates, 1916.djvu/223



T rises by a frozen mere,

With nave and transepts of the pines

That towering 'mid the snows appear

Majestic and sublime;

While, with a myriad fair designs

Of feathery-tufted tracery,

Their tops adorn with silver rime

The azure vault's immensity.

Rock-piled, the altar to the East

Lies argent-spread; on either hand—

Meek servers at the lonely feast—

Surpliced and tall the birches stand,

Like ghostly acolytes,

And through ice-mailèd branches pass,

Prismatic from celestial heights,

The tints of mediæval glass.

Awed, as in no cathedral raised

By human thought, alone, and still,

I muse on one who dying praised