(With lines on hinges to fit it.)
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!
Oxford. December, 1829.