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Translated by C. T. Brooks
IN Saint Just the silent bowers | |
| Hear a drowsy funeral lay: | |
| Bells are humming from the towers | |
| For the monk who died to-day. | |
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| Look upon the dead man’s forehead! Round it | 5 |
| Runs a line of faded bloody red. | |
| Once a crown of thorns, in penance, bound it? | |
| No, a golden crown once pressed that head! | |
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| Comes a monk to that dead face, now, | |
| Draws the cap down o’er the eye;— | 10 |
| Of the crown that evil trace, now, | |
| Veiled from mortal sight shall lie. | |
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| See that arm! a sceptre once it wielded; | |
| Half a world could feel its faintest stir; | |
| Firmer, higher still, towards heaven he held it, | 15 |
| Like a rock that holds a towering fir! | |
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| That dead arm,—there comes to raise it, | |
| Now, a brother of St. Just, | |
| Puts a cross therein, and lays it | |
| On the bosom’s lifeless dust. | 20 |
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| Like the rainbow stairway, heavenward soaring, | |
| Shone the day that hailed his new-born eye; | |
| Kings his cradle rocked, the child adoring, | |
| Queenly voices sang his lullaby. | |
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| Now a choir of monks, with droning, | 25 |
| Dismal voice, the dirge prolong, | |
| As they ever do, intoning | |
| Burial hymn or Easter-song. | |
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| Lo! the sun goes down,—that sun that never | |
| To this dead man’s empire said farewell; | 30 |
| For what these call evening-red, is ever | |
| Morning-red to those that westward dwell. | |
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| Softly, now, the bells are ringing: | |
| Lovely valleys, fare ye well! | |
| Hoarsely, now, the monks are singing: | 35 |
| World of vanity, farewell! | |
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| Through church windows yet once more is flaming | |
| On the bier the sun’s great eye of red, | |
| Here to see, what there he ’ll go proclaiming, | |
| How the ruler of two worlds lies dead! | 40 |
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| Swain and herdsmaid, as the pealing | |
| Bell and dirge sound far and wide, | |
| Bare their heads, and pray with feeling | |
| For the pious monk that died. | |
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