Page:The poems of George Eliot (Crowell, 1884).djvu/336

 308 And with her little Boy wears common clothes,

Caring for common wants, remembering

That day when good Saint Joseph left his work

To marry her with humble trust sublime.

The monks are gone, their shadows fall no more

Tall-frocked and cowled athwart the evening fields

At milking-time; their silent corridors

Are turned to homes of bare-armed, aproned men,

Who toil for wife and. children. But the bells,

Pealing on high from two quaint convent towers,

Still ring the Catholic signals, summoning

To grave remembrance of the larger life

That bears our own, like perishable fruit

Upon its heaven-wide branches. At their sound

The shepherd boy far off upon the hill,

The workers with the saw and at the forge,

The triple generation round the hearth—

Grandames and mothers and the flute-voiced girls —

Fall on their knees and send forth prayerful cries

To the kind Mother with the little Boy,

Who pleads for helpless men against the storm,

Lightning and plagues and all terrific shapes

Of power supreme.

Within the prettiest hollow of these hills.

Just as you enter it, upon the slope

Stands a low cottage neighbored cheerily

By running water, which, at farthest end

Of the same hollow, turns a heavy mill,

And feeds the pasture for the miller's cows,

Blanchi and Nägeli, Veilchen and the rest,

Matrons with faces as Griselda mild,

Coming at call. And on the farthest height

A little tower looks out above the pines

Where mounting you will find a sanctuary

Open and still; without, the silent crowd