Monks

Why, dear Cousin,
                why
Ask for verses,
when a poet’s
fount of song is
                dry?
Or, if aught be
                there,
Harsh and chill, it
ill may touch the
hand of lady
                fair.
Who can perfumed waters
                bring
From a convent
                spring?

“Monks in the olden
                time,
“They were rhymesters?”⁠—
they were rhymesters,
but in Latin
                rhyme.
Monks in the days of
                old
Lived in secret,
in the Church’s
kindly-sheltering
                fold.
No bland meditators
                they
Of a courtly
                lay.

“They had visions
                bright?”⁠—
they had visions,
yet not sent in
slumbers soft and
                light.
No! a lesson
                stern
First by vigils,
fast, and penance
theirs it was to
                learn.
This their soul-ennobling
                gain,
Joys wrought out by
                pain.

“When from home they
                stirr’d,
“Sweet their voices?”⁠—
still, a blessing
closed their merriest
                word;
And their gayest
                smile
Told of musings
solitary,
and the hallow’d
                aisle.
“Songsters?”⁠—hark! they answer!
                round
Plaintive chantings
                sound!

Grey his cowlèd
                vest,
Whose strong heart has
pledged his service
to the cloister
                blest.
Duly garb’d is
                he,
As the frost-work
gems the branches
of yon stately
                tree.
’Tis a danger-thwarting
                spell,
And it fits me
                well!