Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14.djvu/207

1864.] Turning the mill-wheel, caught his ear;

And through the grating of the cell

He saw the honeysuckles peer;

And knew 't was summer, that the sheep

In golden pastures lay asleep;

And felt, that, somehow, God was near.

In his green pulpit on the elm,

The robin, abbot of that wood,

Held forth by times; and Friar Jerome

Listened, and smiled, and understood.

While summer wrapped the blissful land,

What joy it was to labor so,

To see the long-tressed Angels grow

Beneath the cunning of his hand,

Vignette and tail-piece deftly wrought!

And little recked he of the poor

That missed him at the Convent-door;

Or, thinking of them, put the thought

Aside. "I feed the souls of men

Henceforth, and not their bodies!"—yet

Their sharp, pinched features, now and then,

Stole in between him and his Book,

And filled him with a vague regret.

Now on that region fell a blight:

The corn grew cankered in its sheath;

And from the verdurous uplands rolled

A sultry vapor fraught with death,—

A poisonous mist, that, like a pall,

Hung black and stagnant over all.

Then came the sickness,—the malign

Green-spotted terror, called the Pest,

That took the light from loving eyes,

And made the young bride's gentle breast

A fatal pillow. Ah! the woe,

The crime, the madness that befell!

In one short night that vale became

More foul than Dante's inmost hell.

Men cursed their wives; and mothers left

Their nursing babes alone to die,

And wantoned, singing, through the streets,

With shameless brow and frenzied eye;

And senseless clowns, not fearing God,—

Such power the spotted fever had,—

Razed Cragwood Castle on the hill,

Pillaged the wine-bins, and went mad.

And evermore that dreadful pall

Of mist hung stagnant over all:

By day, a sickly light broke through

The heated fog, on town and field;