Lays and Legends (Second Series)

They have no souls to rejoice,
Theirs is but folly and noise.
Oh for a voice that could sing
Songs to the Queen of the blest,
Hymns to the Dearest and Best,
Songs to our Master, her King!"

The church was full of silence. I shut in
Its loss and loneliness, and went my way.
Its sadness was not less its walls within
Because I wore it in my heart that day,
And many a day since, when I see again
Marsh sunsets, and across the golden plain
The church's golden roof and arches gray.

Along wet roads, all shining with late rain,
And through wet woods, all dripping, brown and sere,
I came one day towards the church again.
It was the spring-time of the day and year;
The sky was light and bright and flecked with cloud
That, wind-swept, changeful, through bright rents allowed
Sun and blue sky to smile and disappear.

The sky behind the old gray church was gray —
Gray as my memories, and gray as I;
The forlorn graves each side the grassy way
Called to me "Brother!" as I passed them by.
The door was open. "I shall feel again,"
I thought, "that inextinguishable pain
Of longing loss and hopeless memory."

When – O electric flash of ecstasy!
No spirit's moan of pain fell on my ear —
A human voice, an angel's melody,
God let me in that perfect moment hear.
Oh, the sweet rush of gladness and delight,
Of human striving to the heavenly light,
Of great ideals, permanent and dear!

All the old dreams linked with the newer faith,
All the old faith with higher dreams enwound,
Surged through the very heart of loss and death
In passionate waves of pure and perfect sound.
The past came back: the Christ, the Mother-maid,
The incense of the hearts that praised and prayed,
The past's peace, and the future's faith profound.
"Ave Maria,
Gratiâ plena,
Dominus tecum:
Benedicta tu
In mulieribus,
Et benedictus fructus ventris tui Jesus.
Sancta Maria, Mater Dei,
Ora pro nobis peccatoribus
Nunc et in horâ mortis nostræ. Amen."

And all the soul of all the past was here —
A human heart that loved the great and good,
A heart to which the great ideals were dear,
One that had heard and that had understood,
As I had done, the church's desolate moan,
And answered it as I had never done,
And never willed to do and never could.

I left the church, glad to the soul and strong,
And passed along by fresh earth-scented ways;
Safe in my heart the echo of that song
Lived, as it will live with me all my days.
The church will never lose that echo, nor
Be quite as lonely ever any more;
Nor will my soul, where too that echo stays.

RYE

A little town that stands upon a hill,
Against whose base the white waves once leaped high;
Now spreading round it, even, green and still,
The placid pastures of the marshes lie.

The red-roofed houses and the gray church tower
Bear half asleep the sunshine and the rain;
They wait, so long have waited, for the hour
When the wild, welcome sea shall come again.

The lovely lights across the marshes pass,
The dykes grow fair with blossom, reed and sedge;
The patient beasts crop the long, cool, green grass,
The willows shiver at the water's edge;

But the town sleeps, it will not wake for these.
The sea some day again will round it break,
Will surge across these leagues of pastoral peace,
And then the little town will laugh, and wake.

THE BALLAD OF THE TWO SPELLS

"Why dost thou weep?" the mass priest said;
"Fair dame, why dost thou weep?"
"I weep because my lord is laid
In an enchanted sleep.