Page:Two Mock Epics (Hanuman and Tantum Religio), Lyrics, Post Meridian Verse, The Turret Captain's Toast and other Verses.pdf/127

 Or ashen grey, moor, scar and crag on,

Pale in the low moon’s shuddering beam,

Like the wan spectres of a dream.

So Blasius won the day, at least, he

Appeared to win, but soon his outlines

And his Achates, too, grow misty

Far down stream, and the night of doubt lines

The hollow vale, and hangs its pall

O’er mountain shrine, o’er echoing hall,

O’er whited kirk, o’er fretted altar,

O’er chanted rhymes, o’er periods rounded,

O’er creeds that fail, o’er faiths that falter,

All mouldering, in one white ring bounded,

Dim as the shadowy streams that pen

The pale, wan ghosts that once were men;

But Fuchs much fame and praise acquired

For charity and magnanimity.

True, had he dared, he would have fired

With his own hands the Calvin dimity:

History, though, must not note intentions,

Or fame were scarce as well-earned pensions.

And this same late-won reputation

Of charity towards foes heretical

He used, with persons high in station,

To get sealed up with seals hermetical

That fount of eloquence artesian

Had soused them with its periods Rhetian.

Next, to expunge it from their walls,

With mayor and judge he interceded:

Surely the Chiavennian Pauls

Their Blasio’s ministration needed;