Page:The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14.djvu/209

1864.] With silvery clang, by thorp and town,

The bells made merry in their spires,

Men kissed each other on the street,

And music piped to dancing feet

The livelong night, by roaring fires!

Then Friar Jerome, a wasted shape,—

For he had taken the Plague at last,—

Rose up, and through the happy town,

And through the wintry woodlands passed

Into the Convent. What a gloom

Sat brooding in each desolate room!

What silence in the corridor!

For of that long, innumerous train

Which issued forth a month before,

Scarce twenty had come back again!

Counting his rosary step by step,

With a forlorn and vacant air,

Like some unshriven church-yard thing,

The Friar crawled up the mouldy stair

To his damp cell, that he might look

Once more on his belovèd Book.

And there it lay upon the stand,

Open!—he had not left it so.

He grasped it, with a cry; for, lo!

He saw that some angelic hand,

While he was gone, had finished it!

There 't was complete, as he had planned!

There, at the end, stood, writ

And gilded as no man could do,—

Not even that pious anchoret,

Bilfrid, the wonderful,—nor yet

The miniatore Ethelwold,—

Nor Durham's Bishop, who of old

(England still hoards the priceless leaves)

Did the Four Gospels all in gold.

And Friar Jerome nor spoke nor stirred,

But, with his eyes fixed on that word,

He passed from sin and want and scorn;

And suddenly the chapel-bells

Rang in the holy Christmas-Morn!

In those wild wars which racked the land,

Since then, and kingdoms rent in twain,

The Friar's Beautiful Book was lost,—

That miracle of hand and brain:

Yet, though its leaves were torn and tossed,

The volume was not writ in vain!