Page:The poetical works of Matthew Arnold, 1897.djvu/439

Rh STANZAS FROM CARNAC.

on its rocky knoll descried,

Saint Michael's chapel cuts the sky.

I climbed; beneath me, bright and wide,

Lay the lone coast of Brittany.

Bright in the sunset, weird and still,

It lay beside the Atlantic wave,

As though the wizard Merlin's will

Yet charmed it from his forest-grave.

Behind me on their grassy sweep,

Bearded with lichen, scrawled and gray,

The giant stones of Carnac sleep,

In the mild evening of the May.

No priestly stern procession now

Streams through their rows of pillars old;

No victims bleed, no Druids bow:

Sheep make the daisied aisles their fold.

From bush to bush the cuckoo flies,

The orchis red gleams everywhere;

Gold furze with broom in blossom vies,

The bluebells perfume all the air.

And o'er the glistening, lonely land,

Rise up, all round, the Christian spires;

The church of Carnac, by the strand,

Catches the westering sun's last fires.

And there, across the watery way,

See, low above the tide at flood,

The sickle-sweep of Quiberon Bay,

Whose beach once ran with loyal blood!