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I. BEYOND his silent vault green springs went by, | |
| The river flashed along its open way, | |
| Blithe swallows flitted in their billowy play, | |
| And the sweet lark went quivering up the sky. | |
| With him was stillness and his heart’s dumb cry | 5 |
| And darkness of the tomb through hopeless day, | |
| Save that along the wall one single ray | |
| Shifted, through jealous loop-holes, westerly. | |
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| One single ray: and where its light could fall | |
| His rusty nail carved saints and angels there, | 10 |
| And warriors, and slim girls with braided hair, | |
| And blossomy boughs, and birds athwart the air. | |
| Rude work, but yet a world. And light for all | |
| Was one slant ray upon a prison wall. | |
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II. One ray, and in its track he lived and wrought, | 15 |
| And in free wideness of the world, I know, | |
| One said, “Fair sunshine, yet it serves not so, | |
| It needs a tenderer when I shape my thought;” | |
| And, “’Tis too brown and molten in the drought,” | |
| And, “’Tis too wan a greyness in this snow,” | 20 |
| And would have toiled, but wearied and was woe, | |
| While days stole past and had bequeathed him nought. | |
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| Maybe in Gisors, round the fortress mead— | |
| Gisors where now, when fair-time brings its press, | |
| They seek the prisoner’s tower to gaze and guess | 25 |
| And love the work he made in loneliness— | |
| One cursed the gloom, and died without a deed, | |
| The while he carved where his one ray could lead. | |
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III. “Oh loneliness! oh darkness!” so we wail, | |
| Crying to life to give we know not what, | 30 |
| The hope not come, the ecstasy forgot, | |
| The things we should have had and, needing, fail, | |
| Nor know what thing it was for which we ail, | |
| And, like tired travellers to an unknown spot, | |
| Pass listless, noting only “Yet ’tis not,” | 35 |
| And count the ended day an empty tale. | |
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| Ah me! to linger on in dim repose | |
| And feel the numbness over hand and thought, | |
| And feel the silence in the heart, that grows. | |
| Ah me! to have forgot the hope we sought. | 40 |
| One ray of light, and a soul lived and wrought, | |
| And on the prison walls a message rose. | |
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