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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Golden Legend: IV. The Road To Hirschau</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">PRINCE HENRY _and_ ELSIE, _with their attendants, on<br>horseback._</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Elsie._ Onward and onward the highway runs<br>to the distant city, impatiently bearing<br>Tidings of human joy and disaster, of love and of<br>hate, of doing and daring!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Prince Henry._ This life of ours is a wild aeolian<br>harp of many a joyous strain,<br>But under them all there runs a loud perpetual wail,<br>as of souls in pain.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Elsie._ Faith alone can interpret life, and the heart<br>that aches and bleeds with the stigma<br>Of pain, alone bears the likeness of Christ, and can<br>comprehend its dark enigma.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Prince Henry._ Man is selfish, and seeketh pleasure<br>with little care of what may betide;<br>Else why am I travelling here beside thee, a demon<br>that rides by an angel's side?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Elsie._ All the hedges are white with dust, and<br>the great dog under the creaking wain<br>Hangs his head in the lazy heat, while onward the<br>horses toil and strain</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Prince Henry._ Now they stop at the wayside inn,<br>and the wagoner laughs with the landlord's daughter,<br>While out of the dripping trough the horses distend<br>their leathern sides with water.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Elsie._ All through life there are wayside inns,<br>where man may refresh his soul with love;<br>Even the lowest may quench his thirst at rivulets fed<br>by springs from above.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Prince Henry._ Yonder, where rises the cross of<br>stone, our journey along the highway ends,<br>And over the fields, by a bridle path, down into the<br>broad green valley descends.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Elsie._ I am not sorry to leave behind the beaten<br>road with its dust and heat;<br>The air will be sweeter far, and the turf will be softer<br>under our horses' feet.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">(_They turn down a green lane._)</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Elsie._ Sweet is the air with the budding haws,<br>and the valley stretching for miles below<br>Is white with blossoming cheery trees, as if just covered<br>with lightest snow.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Prince Henry._ Over our heads a white cascade is<br>gleaming against the distant hill;<br>We cannot hear it, nor see it move, but it hangs like<br>a banner when winds are still.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Elsie._ Damp and cool is this deep ravine, and<br>cool the sound of the brook by our side!<br>What is this castle that rises above us, and lords it<br>over a land so wide?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Prince Henry._ It is the home of the Counts of<br>Calva; well have I known these scenes of old,<br>Well I remember each tower and turret, remember the<br>brooklet, the wood, and the wold.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Elsie._ Hark! from the little village below us the<br>bells of the church are ringing for rain!<br>Priests and peasants in long procession come forth<br>and kneel on the arid plain.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Prince Henry._ They have not long to wait, for I<br>see in the south uprising a little cloud,<br>That before the sun shall be set will cover the sky<br>above us as with a shroud.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">(_They pass on._)</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">* * * * *</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">THE CONVENT OF HIRSCHAU IN THE BLACK FOREST.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">* * * * *</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_The Convent cellar._ FRIAR CLAUS _comes in with a<br>light and a basket of empty flagons._</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Friar Claus._ I always enter this sacred place<br>With a thoughtful, solemn, and reverent pace,<br>Pausing long enough on each stair<br>To breathe an ejaculatory prayer,<br>And a benediction on the vines<br>That produce these various sorts of wines!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">For my part, I am well content<br>That we have got through with the tedious Lent!<br>Fasting is all very well for those<br>Who have to contend with invisible foes;<br>But I am quite sure it does not agree<br>With a quiet, peaceable man like me,<br>Who am not of that nervous and meagre kind<br>That are always distressed in body and mind!<br>And at times it really does me good<br>To come down among this brotherhood,<br>Dwelling forever under ground,<br>Silent, contemplative, round and sound;<br>Each one old, and brown with mould,<br>But filled to the lips with the ardor of youth,<br>With the latent power and love of truth,<br>And with virtues fervent and manifold.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I have heard it said, that at Easter-tide,<br>When buds are swelling on every side,<br>And the sap begins to move in the vine.<br>Then in all the cellars, far and wide,<br>The oldest, as well as the newest, wine<br>Begins to stir itself, and ferment,<br>With a kind of revolt and discontent<br>At being so long in darkness pent,<br>And fain would burst from its sombre tun<br>To bask on the hillside in the sun;<br>As in the bosom of us poor friars,<br>The tumult of half-subdued desires<br>For the world that we have left behind<br>Disturbs at times all peace of mind!<br>And now that we have lived through Lent,<br>My duty it is, as often before,<br>To open awhile the prison-door,<br>And give these restless spirits vent.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Now here is a cask that stands alone,<br>And has stood a hundred years or more,<br>Its beard of cobwebs, long and hoar,<br>Trailing and sweeping along the floor,<br>Like Barbarossa, who sits in his cave,<br>Taciturn, sombre, sedate, and grave,<br>Till his beard has grown through the table of stone!<br>It is of the quick and not of the dead!<br>In its veins the blood is hot and red,<br>And a heart still beats in those ribs of oak<br>That time may have tamed, but has not broke;<br>It comes from Bacharach on the Rhine,<br>Is one of the three best kinds of wine,<br>And costs some hundred florins the ohm;<br>But that I do not consider dear,<br>When I remember that every year<br>Four butts are sent to the Pope of Rome.<br>And whenever a goblet thereof I drain,<br>The old rhyme keeps running in my brain:</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">At Bacharach on the Rhine,<br>At Hochheim on the Main,<br>And at Wuerzburg on the Stein,<br>Grow the three best kinds of wine!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">They are all good wines, and better far<br>Than those of the Neckar, or those of the Ahr<br>In particular, Wuerzburg well may boast<br>Of its blessed wine of the Holy Ghost,<br>Which of all wines I like the most.<br>This I shall draw for the Abbot's drinking,<br>Who seems to be much of my way of thinking.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">(_Fills a flagon._)</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Ah! how the streamlet laughs and sings!<br>What a delicious fragrance springs<br>From the deep flagon, while it fills,<br>As of hyacinths and daffodils!<br>Between this cask and the Abbot's lips<br>Many have been the sips and slips;<br>Many have been the draughts of wine,<br>On their way to his, that have stopped at mine;<br>And many a time my soul has hankered<br>For a deep draught out of his silver tankard,<br>When it should have been busy with other affairs,<br>Less with its longings and more with its prayers.<br>But now there is no such awkward condition,<br>No danger of death and eternal perdition;<br>So here's to the Abbot and Brothers all,<br>Who dwell in this convent of Peter and Paul!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">(_He drinks._)</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">O cordial delicious! O soother of pain!<br>It flashes like sunshine into my brain!<br>A benison rest on the Bishop who sends<br>Such a fudder of wine as this to his friends!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And now a flagon for such as may ask<br>A draught from the noble Bacharach cask,<br>And I will be gone, though I know full well<br>The cellar's a cheerfuller place than the cell.<br>Behold where he stands, all sound and good,<br>Brown and old in his oaken hood;<br>Silent he seems externally<br>As any Carthusian monk may be;<br>But within, what a spirit of deep unrest!<br>What a seething and simmering in his breast!<br>As if the heaving of his great heart<br>Would burst his belt of oak apart!<br>Let me unloose this button of wood,<br>And quiet a little his turbulent mood.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">(_Sets it running._)</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">See! how its currents gleam and shine,<br>As if they had caught the purple hues<br>Of autumn sunsets on the Rhine,<br>Descending and mingling with the dews;<br>Or as if the grapes were stained with the blood<br>Of the innocent boy, who, some years back,<br>Was taken and crucified by the Jews,<br>In that ancient town of Bacharach;<br>Perdition upon those infidel Jews,<br>In that ancient town of Bacharach!<br>The beautiful town, that gives us wine<br>With the fragrant odor of Muscadine!<br>I should deem it wrong to let this pass<br>Without first touching my lips to the glass,<br>For here in the midst of the current I stand,<br>Like the stone Pfalz in the midst of the river<br>Taking toll upon either hand,<br>And much more grateful to the giver.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">(_He drinks._)</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Here, now, is a very inferior kind,<br>Such as in any town you may find,<br>Such as one might imagine would suit<br>The rascal who drank wine out of a boot,<br>And, after all, it was not a crime,<br>For he won thereby Dorf Hueffelsheim.<br>A jolly old toper! who at a pull<br>Could drink a postilion's jack boot full,<br>And ask with a laugh, when that was done,<br>If the fellow had left the other one!<br>This wine is as good as we can afford<br>To the friars, who sit at the lower board,<br>And cannot distinguish bad from good,<br>And are far better off than if they could,<br>Being rather the rude disciples of beer<br>Than of anything more refined and dear!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">(_Fills the other flagon and departs._)</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">* * * * *</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">THE SCRIPTORIUM.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">FRIAR PACIFICUS _transcribing and illuminating._</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Friar Pacificus_ It is growing dark! Yet one line more,<br>And then my work for today is o'er.<br>I come again to the name of the Lord!<br>Ere I that awful name record,<br>That is spoken so lightly among men,<br>Let me pause awhile, and wash my pen;<br>Pure from blemish and blot must it be<br>When it writes that word of mystery!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Thus have I labored on and on,<br>Nearly through the Gospel of John.<br>Can it be that from the lips<br>Of this same gentle Evangelist,<br>That Christ himself perhaps has kissed,<br>Came the dread Apocalypse!<br>It has a very awful look,<br>As it stands there at the end of the book,<br>Like the sun in an eclipse.<br>Ah me! when I think of that vision divine,<br>Think of writing it, line by line,<br>I stand in awe of the terrible curse,<br>Like the trump of doom, in the closing verse!<br>God forgive me! if ever I<br>Take aught from the book of that Prophecy,<br>Lest my part too should be taken away<br>From the Book of Life on the Judgment Day.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">This is well written, though I say it!<br>I should not be afraid to display it,<br>In open day, on the selfsame shelf<br>With the writings of St Thecla herself,<br>Or of Theodosius, who of old<br>Wrote the Gospels in letters of gold!<br>That goodly folio standing yonder,<br>Without a single blot or blunder,<br>Would not bear away the palm from mine,<br>If we should compare them line for line.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">There, now, is an initial letter!<br>King Rene himself never made a better!<br>Finished down to the leaf and the snail,<br>Down to the eyes on the peacock's tail!<br>And now, as I turn the volume over,<br>And see what lies between cover and cover,<br>What treasures of art these pages hold,<br>All ablaze with crimson and gold,<br>God forgive me! I seem to feel<br>A certain satisfaction steal<br>Into my heart, and into my brain,<br>As if my talent had not lain<br>Wrapped in a napkin, and all in vain.<br>Yes, I might almost say to the Lord,<br>Here is a copy of thy Word,<br>Written out with much toil and pain;<br>Take it, O Lord, and let it be<br>As something I have done for thee!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">(_He looks from the window._)</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">How sweet the air is! How fair the scene!<br>I wish I had as lovely a green<br>To paint my landscapes and my leaves!<br>How the swallows twitter under the eaves!<br>There, now, there is one in her nest;<br>I can just catch a glimpse of her head and breast,<br>And will sketch her thus, in her quiet nook,<br>In the margin of my Gospel book.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">(_He makes a sketch._)</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I can see no more. Through the valley yonder<br>A shower is passing; I hear the thunder<br>Mutter its curses in the air,<br>The Devil's own and only prayer!<br>The dusty road is brown with rain,<br>And speeding on with might and main,<br>Hitherward rides a gallant train.<br>They do not parley, they cannot wait,<br>But hurry in at the convent gate.<br>What a fair lady! and beside her<br>What a handsome, graceful, noble rider!<br>Now she gives him her hand to alight;<br>They will beg a shelter for the night.<br>I will go down to the corridor,<br>And try to see that face once more;<br>It will do for the face of some beautiful Saint,<br>Or for one of the Maries I shall paint.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">(_Goes out._)</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">* * * * *</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">THE CLOISTERS.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">* * * * *</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_The_ ABBOT ERNESTUS _pacing to and fro._</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Abbot._ Slowly, slowly up the wall<br>Steals the sunshine, steals the shade;<br>Evening damps begin to fall,<br>Evening shadows are displayed.<br>Round me, o'er me, everywhere,<br>All the sky is grand with clouds,<br>And athwart the evening air<br>Wheel the swallows home in crowds.<br>Shafts of sunshine from the west<br>Paint the dusky windows red;<br>Darker shadows, deeper rest,<br>Underneath and overhead.<br>Darker, darker, and more wan,<br>In my breast the shadows fall;<br>Upward steals the life of man,<br>As the sunshine from the wall.<br>From the wall into the sky,<br>From the roof along the spire;<br>Ah, the souls of those that die<br>Are but sunbeams lifted higher.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">(_Enter_ PRINCE HENRY.)</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Prince Henry._ Christ is arisen!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Abbot._ Amen! he is arisen!<br>His peace be with you!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Prince Henry._ Here it reigns forever!<br>The peace of God, that passeth understanding,<br>Reigns in these cloisters and these corridors,<br>Are you Ernestus, Abbot of the convent?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Abbot._ I am.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Prince Henry._ And I Prince Henry of Hoheneck,<br>Who crave your hospitality to-night.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Abbot._ You are thrice welcome to our humble walls.<br>You do us honor; and we shall requite it,<br>I fear, but poorly, entertaining you<br>With Paschal eggs, and our poor convent wine,<br>The remnants of our Easter holidays.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Prince Henry._ How fares it with the holy monks of Hirschau?<br>Are all things well with them?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Abbot._ All things are well.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Prince Henry._ A noble convent! I have known it long<br>By the report of travellers. I now see<br>Their commendations lag behind the truth.<br>You lie here in the valley of the Nagold<br>As in a nest: and the still river, gliding<br>Along its bed, is like an admonition<br>How all things pass. Your lands are rich and ample,<br>And your revenues large. God's benediction<br>Rests on your convent.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Abbot._ By our charities<br>We strive to merit it. Our Lord and Master,<br>When he departed, left us in his will,<br>As our best legacy on earth, the poor!<br>These we have always with us; had we not,<br>Our hearts would grow as hard as are these stones.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Prince Henry._ If I remember right, the Counts of Calva<br>Founded your convent.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Abbot._ Even as you say.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Prince Henry._ And, if I err not, it is very old.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Abbot._ Within these cloisters lie already buried<br>Twelve holy Abbots. Underneath the flags<br>On which we stand, the Abbot William lies,<br>Of blessed memory.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Prince Henry._ And whose tomb is that,<br>Which bears the brass escutcheon?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Abbot._ A benefactor's.<br>Conrad, a Count of Calva, he who stood<br>Godfather to our bells.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Prince Henry._ Your monks are learned<br>And holy men, I trust.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Abbot._ There are among them<br>Learned and holy men. Yet in this age<br>We need another Hildebrand, to shake<br>And purify us like a mighty wind.<br>The world is wicked, and sometimes I wonder<br>God does not lose his patience with it wholly,<br>And shatter it like glass! Even here, at times,<br>Within these walls, where all should be at peace,<br>I have my trials. Time has laid his hand<br>Upon my heart, gently, not smiting it,<br>But as a harper lays his open palm<br>Upon his harp, to deaden its vibrations.<br>Ashes are on my head, and on my lips<br>Sackcloth, and in my breast a heaviness<br>And weariness of life, that makes me ready<br>To say to the dead Abbots under us,<br>'Make room for me!' Only I see the dusk<br>Of evening twilight coming, and have not<br>Completed half my task; and so at times<br>The thought of my shortcomings in this life<br>Falls like a shadow on the life to come.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Prince Henry._ We must all die, and not the old alone;<br>The young have no exemption from that doom.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Abbot._ Ah, yes! the young may die, but the old must!<br>That is the difference.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Prince Henry._ I have heard much laud<br>Of your transcribers. Your Scriptorium<br>Is famous among all, your manuscripts<br>Praised for their beauty and their excellence.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Abbot._ That is indeed our boast. If you desire it,<br>You shall behold these treasures. And meanwhile<br>Shall the Refectorarius bestow<br>Your horses and attendants for the night.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">(_They go in. The Vesper-bell rings._)</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">* * * * *</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">THE CHAPEL.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">* * * * *</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Vespers; after which the monks retire, a chorister<br>leading an old monk who is blind_.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Prince Henry._ They are all gone, save one who lingers,<br>Absorbed in deep and silent prayer.<br>As if his heart could find no rest,<br>At times he beats his heaving breast<br>With clenched and convulsive fingers,<br>Then lifts them trembling in the air.<br>A chorister, with golden hair,<br>Guides hitherward his heavy pace.<br>Can it be so? Or does my sight<br>Deceive me in the uncertain light?<br>Ah no! I recognize that face,<br>Though Time has touched it in his flight,<br>And changed the auburn hair to white.<br>It is Count Hugo of the Rhine,<br>The deadliest foe of all our race,<br>And hateful unto me and mine!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_The Blind Monk_. Who is it that doth stand so near<br>His whispered words I almost hear?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Prince Henry_. I am Prince Henry of Hoheneck,<br>And you, Count Hugo of the Rhine!<br>I know you, and I see the scar,<br>The brand upon your forehead, shine<br>And redden like a baleful star!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_The Blind Monk_. Count Hugo once, but now the wreck<br>Of what I was. O Hoheneck!<br>The passionate will, the pride, the wrath<br>That bore me headlong on my path,<br>Stumbled and staggered into fear,<br>And failed me in my mad career,<br>As a tired steed some evil-doer,<br>Alone upon a desolate moor,<br>Bewildered, lost, deserted, blind,<br>And hearing loud and close behind<br>The o'ertaking steps of his pursuer.<br>Then suddenly, from the dark there came<br>A voice that called me by my name,<br>And said to me, 'Kneel down and pray!'<br>And so my terror passed away,<br>Passed utterly away forever.<br>Contrition, penitence, remorse,<br>Came on me, with o'erwhelming force;<br>A hope, a longing, an endeavor,<br>By days of penance and nights of prayer,<br>To frustrate and defeat despair!<br>Calm, deep, and still is now my heart.<br>With tranquil waters overflowed;<br>A lake whose unseen fountains start,<br>Where once the hot volcano glowed.<br>And you, O Prince of Hoheneck!<br>Have known me in that earlier time,<br>A man of violence and crime,<br>Whose passions brooked no curb nor check.<br>Behold me now, in gentler mood,<br>One of this holy brotherhood.<br>Give me your hand; here let me kneel;<br>Make your reproaches sharp as steel;<br>Spurn me, and smite me on each cheek;<br>No violence can harm the meek,<br>There is no wound Christ cannot heal!<br>Yes; lift your princely hand, and take<br>Revenge, if 't is revenge you seek,<br>Then pardon me, for Jesus' sake!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Prince Henry._ Arise, Count Hugo! let there be<br>No farther strife nor enmity<br>Between us twain; we both have erred!<br>Too rash in act, too wroth in word,<br>From the beginning have we stood<br>In fierce, defiant attitude,<br>Each thoughtless of the other's right,<br>And each reliant on his might.<br>But now our souls are more subdued;<br>The hand of God, and not in vain,<br>Has touched us with the fire of pain.<br>Let us kneel down, and side by side<br>Pray, till our souls are purified,<br>And pardon will not be denied!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">(_They kneel._)</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">* * * * *</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">THE REFECTORY.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">* * * * *</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Gaudiolum of Monks at midnight. LUCIFER disguised<br>as a Friar._</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Friar Paul (sings)._ Ave! color vini clari,<br>Dulcis potus, non aman,<br>Tua nos inebriari<br>Digneris potentia!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Friar Cuthbert._ Not so much noise, my worthy freres,<br>You'll disturb the Abbot at his prayers.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Friar Paul (sings)._ O! quam placens in colore!<br>O! quam fragrans in odore!<br>O! quam sapidum in ore!<br>Dulce linguse vinculum!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Friar Cuthbert._ I should think your tongue had<br>broken its chain!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Friar Paul (sings)._ Felix venter quern intrabis!<br>Felix guttur quod rigabis!<br>Felix os quod tu lavabis!<br>Et beata labia!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Friar Cuthbert._ Peace! I say, peace!<br>Will you never cease!<br>You will rouse up the Abbot, I tell you again!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Friar John._ No danger! to-night he will let us alone,<br>As I happen to know he has guests of his own.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Friar Cuthbert._ Who are they?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Friar John._ A German Prince and his train,<br>Who arrived here just before the rain.<br>There is with him a damsel fair to see,<br>As slender and graceful as a reed!<br>When she alighted from her steed,<br>It seemed like a blossom blown from a tree.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Friar Cuthbert._ None of your pale-faced girls for me!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">(_Kisses the girl at his side_.)</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Friar John._ Come, old fellow, drink down to your peg!<br>do not drink any farther, I beg!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Friar Paul (sings)._ In the days of gold,<br>The days of old,<br>Cross of wood<br>And bishop of gold!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Friar Cuthbert (to the girl)._ What an infernal racket and din!<br>No need not blush so, that's no sin.<br>You look very holy in this disguise,<br>Though there's something wicked in your eyes!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Friar Paul (continues.)_ Now we have changed<br>That law so good,<br>To cross of gold<br>And bishop of wood!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Friar Cuthbert._ I like your sweet face under a hood.<br>Sister! how came you into this way?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Girl._ It was you, Friar Cuthbert, who led me astray.<br>Have you forgotten that day in June,<br>When the church was so cool in the afternoon,<br>And I came in to confess my sins?<br>That is where my ruin begins.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Friar John._ What is the name of yonder friar,<br>With an eye that glows like a coal of fire,<br>And such a black mass of tangled hair?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Friar Paul._ He who is sitting there,<br>With a rollicking,<br>Devil may care,<br>Free and easy look and air,<br>As if he were used to such feasting and frollicking?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Friar John._ The same.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Friar Paul._ He's a stranger. You had better ask his name,<br>And where he is going, and whence he came.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Friar John._ Hallo! Sir Friar!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Friar Paul._ You must raise your voice a little higher,<br>He does not seem to hear what you say.<br>Now, try again! He is looking this way.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Friar John._ Hallo! Sir Friar,<br>We wish to inquire<br>Whence you came, and where you are going,<br>And anything else that is worth the knowing.<br>So be so good as to open your head.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Lucifer._ I am a Frenchman born and bred,<br>Going on a pilgrimage to Rome.<br>My home<br>Is the convent of St. Gildas de Rhuys,<br>Of which, very like, you never have heard.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Monks._ Never a word!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Lucifer._ You must know, then, it is in the diocese<br>Called the Diocese of Vannes,<br>In the province of Brittany.<br>From the gray rocks of Morbihan<br>It overlooks the angry sea;<br>The very seashore where,<br>In his great despair,<br>Abbot Abelard walked to and fro,<br>Filling the night with woe,<br>And wailing aloud to the merciless seas<br>The name of his sweet Heloise!<br>Whilst overhead<br>The convent windows gleamed as red<br>As the fiery eyes of the monks within,<br>Who with jovial din<br>Gave themselves up to all kinds of sin!<br>Ha! that is a convent! that is an abbey!<br>Over the doors,<br>None of your death-heads carved in wood,<br>None of your Saints looking pious and good,<br>None of your Patriarchs old and shabby!<br>But the heads and tusks of boars,<br>And the cells<br>Hung all round with the fells<br>of the fallow-deer,<br>And then what cheer!<br>What jolly, fat friars,<br>Sitting round the great, roaring fires,<br>Roaring louder than they,<br>With their strong wines,<br>And their concubines,<br>And never a bell,<br>With its swagger and swell,<br>Calling you up with a start of affright<br>In the dead of night,<br>To send you grumbling down dark stairs,<br>To mumble your prayers,<br>But the cheery crow<br>Of cocks in the yard below,<br>After daybreak, an hour or so,<br>And the barking of deep-mouthed hounds,<br>These are the sounds<br>That, instead of bells, salute the ear.<br>And then all day<br>Up and away<br>Through the forest, hunting the deer!<br>Ah, my friends! I'm afraid that here<br>You are a little too pious, a little too tame,<br>And the more is the shame,<br>It is the greatest folly<br>Not to be jolly;<br>That's what I think!<br>Come, drink, drink,<br>Drink, and die game!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Monks,_ And your Abbot What's-his-name?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Lucifer._ Abelard!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Monks._ Did he drink hard?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Lucifer._ O, no! Not he!<br>He was a dry old fellow,<br>Without juice enough to get thoroughly mellow.<br>There he stood,<br>Lowering at us in sullen mood,<br>As if he had come into Brittany<br>Just to reform our brotherhood!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">(_A roar of laughter_.)</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">But you see<br>It never would do!<br>For some of us knew a thing or two,<br>In the Abbey of St. Gildas de Rhuys!<br>For instance, the great ado<br>With old Fulbert's niece,<br>The young and lovely Heloise!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Friar John._ Stop there, if you please,<br>Till we drink to the fair Heloise.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_All (drinking and shouting)._ Heloise! Heloise!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">(_The Chapel-bell tolls_.)</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Lucifer (starting)._ What is that bell for? Are you such asses<br>As to keep up the fashion of midnight masses?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Friar Cuthbert._ It is only a poor, unfortunate brother,<br>Who is gifted with most miraculous powers<br>Of getting up at all sorts of hours,<br>And, by way of penance and Christian meekness,<br>Of creeping silently out of his cell<br>To take a pull at that hideous bell;<br>So that all the monks who are lying awake<br>May murmur some kind of prayer for his sake,<br>And adapted to his peculiar weakness!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Friar John._ From frailty and fall--</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_All._ Good Lord, deliver us all!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Friar Cuthbert._ And before the bell for matins sounds,<br>He takes his lantern, and goes the rounds,<br>Flashing it into our sleepy eyes,<br>Merely to say it is time to arise.<br>But enough of that. Go on, if you please,<br>With your story about St. Gildas de Rhuys.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Lucifer._ Well, it finally came to pass<br>That, half in fun and half in malice,<br>One Sunday at Mass<br>We put some poison into the chalice.<br>But, either by accident or design,<br>Peter Abelard kept away<br>From the chapel that day,<br>And a poor, young friar, who in his stead<br>Drank the sacramental wine,<br>Fell on the steps of the altar, dead!<br>But look! do you see at the window there<br>That face, with a look of grief and despair,<br>That ghastly face, as of one in pain?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Monks._ Who? where?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Lucifer._ As I spoke, it vanished away again.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Friar Cuthbert._ It is that nefarious<br>Siebald the Refectorarius.<br>That fellow is always playing the scout,<br>Creeping and peeping and prowling about;<br>And then he regales<br>The Abbot with Scandalous tales.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Lucifer_. A spy in the convent? One of the brothers<br>Telling scandalous tales of the others?<br>Out upon him, the lazy loon!<br>I would put a stop to that pretty soon,<br>In a way he should rue it.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Monks_. How shall we do it?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Lucifer_. Do you, brother Paul,<br>Creep under the window, close to the wall,<br>And open it suddenly when I call.<br>Then seize the villain by the hair,<br>And hold him there,<br>And punish him soundly, once for all.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Friar Cuthbert_. As St. Dustan of old,<br>We are told,<br>Once caught the Devil by the nose!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Lucifer_. Ha! ha! that story is very clever,<br>But has no foundation whatsoever.<br>Quick! for I see his face again<br>Glaring in at the window pane;<br>Now! now! and do not spare your blows.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">(FRIAR PAUL _opens the window suddenly, and seizes_<br>SIEBALD. _They beat him._)</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Friar Siebald_. Help! help! are you going to slay me?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Friar Paul_. That will teach you again to betray me!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Friar Siebald_. Mercy! mercy!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Friar Paul_ (_shouting and beating_). Rumpas bellorum lorum,<br>Vim confer amorum<br>Morum verorum, rorun.<br>Tu plena polorum!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Lucifer_. Who stands in the doorway yonder,<br>Stretching out his trembling hand,<br>Just as Abelard used to stand,<br>The flash of his keen, black eyes<br>Forerunning the thunder?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_The Monks (in confusion)_. The Abbot! the<br>Abbot!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Friar Cuthbert (to the girl)_. Put on your disguise!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Friar Francis_. Hide the great flagon<br>From the eyes of the dragon!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Friar Cuthbert_. Pull the brown hood over your face,<br>Lest you bring me into disgrace!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Abbot_. What means this revel and carouse?<br>Is this a tavern and drinking-house?<br>Are you Christian monks, or heathen devils,<br>To pollute this convent with your revels?<br>Were Peter Damian still upon earth,<br>To be shocked by such ungodly mirth,<br>He would write your names, with pen of gall,<br>In his Book of Gomorrah, one and all!<br>Away, you drunkards! to your cells,<br>And pray till you hear the matin-bells;<br>You, Brother Francis, and you, Brother Paul!<br>And as a penance mark each prayer<br>With the scourge upon your shoulders bare;<br>Nothing atones for such a sin<br>But the blood that follows the discipline.<br>And you, Brother Cuthbert, come with me<br>Alone into the sacristy;<br>You, who should be a guide to your brothers,<br>And are ten times worse than all the others,<br>For you I've a draught that has long been brewing<br>You shall do a penance worth the doing!<br>Away to your prayers, then, one and all!<br>I wonder the very, convent wall<br>Does not crumble and crush you in its fall!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">* * * * *</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">THE NEIGHBORING NUNNERY.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">* * * * *</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_The_ ABBESS IRMINGARD _sitting with_ ELSIE _in the<br>moonlight._</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">_Irmingard_ The night is silent, the wind is still,<br>The moon is looking from yonder hill<br>Down upon convent, and grove, and garden;<br>The clouds have passed away from her face,<br>Leaving behind them no sorrowful trace,<br>Only the tender and quiet grace<br>Of one, whose heart had been healed with pardon!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And such am I. My soul within<br>Was dark with passion and soiled with sin.<br>But now its wounds are healed again;<br>Gone are the anguish, the terror, and pain;<br>For across that desolate land of woe,<br>O'er whose burning sands I was forced to go,<br>A wind from heaven began to blow;<br>And all my being trembled and shook,<br>As the leaves of the tree, or the grass of the field,<br>And I was healed, as the sick are healed,<br>When fanned by the leaves of the Holy Book!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">As thou sittest in the moonlight there,<br>Its glory flooding thy golden hair,<br>And the only darkness that which lies<br>In the haunted chambers of thine eyes,<br>I feel my soul drawn unto thee,<br>Strangely, and strongly, and more and more,<br>As to one I have known and loved before;<br>For every soul is akin to me<br>That dwells in the land of mystery!<br>I am the Lady Irmingard,<br>Born of a noble race and name!<br>Many a wandering Suabian bard,<br>Whose life was dreary, and bleak, and hard,<br>Has found through me the way to fame.<br>Brief and bright were those days, and the night<br>Which followed was full of a lurid light.<br>Love, that of every woman's heart<br>Will have the whole, and not a part,<br>That is to her, in Nature's plan,<br>More than ambition is to man,<br>Her light, her life, her very breath,<br>With no alternative but death,<br>Found me a maiden soft and young,<br>Just from the convent's cloistered school,<br>And seated on my lowly stool,<br>Attentive while the minstrels sung.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Gallant, graceful, gentle, tall,<br>Fairest, noblest, best of all,<br>Was Walter of the Vogelweid,<br>And, whatsoever may betide,<br>Still I think of him with pride!<br>His song was of the summer-time<br>The very birds sang in his rhyme;<br>The sunshine, the delicious air,<br>The fragrance of the flowers, were there,<br>And I grew restless as I heard,<br>Restless and buoyant as a bird,<br>Down soft, aerial currents sailing,<br>O'er blossomed orchards, and fields in bloom,<br>And through the momentary gloom<br>Of shadows o'er the landscape trailing,<br>Yielding and borne I knew not where,<br>But feeling resistance unavailing.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And thus, unnoticed and apart,<br>And more by accident than choice.<br>I listened to that single voice<br>Until the chambers of my heart<br>Were filled with it by night and day,<br>One night,--it was a night in May,--<br>Within the garden, unawares,<br>Under the blossoms in the gloom,<br>I heard it utter my own name<br>With protestations and wild prayers;<br>And it rang through me, and became<br>Like the archangel's trump of doom,<br>Which the soul hears, and must obey;<br>And mine arose as from a tomb.<br>My former life now seemed to me<br>Such as hereafter death may be,<br>When in the great Eternity<br>We shall awake and find it day.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">It was a dream, and would not stay;<br>A dream, that in a single night<br>Faded and vanished out of sight.<br>My father's anger followed fast<br>This passion, as a freshening blast<br>Seeks out and fans the fire, whose rage<br>It may increase, but not assuage.<br>And he exclaimed: 'No wandering bard<br>Shall win thy hand, O Irmingard!<br>For which Prince Henry of Hoheneck<br>By messenger and letter sues.'</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Gently, but firmly, I replied:<br>'Henry of Hoheneck I discard!<br>Never the hand of Irmingard<br>Shall lie in his as the hand of a bride!'<br>This said I, Walter, for thy sake:<br>This said I, for I could not choose.<br>After a pause, my father spake<br>In that cold and deliberate tone<br>Which turns the hearer into stone,<br>And seems itself the act to be<br>That follows with such dread certainty;<br>'This, or the cloister and the veil!'<br>No other words than these he said,<br>But they were like a funeral wail;<br>My life was ended, my heart was dead.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">That night from the castle-gate went down,<br>With silent, slow, and stealthy pace,<br>Two shadows, mounted on shadowy steeds,<br>Taking the narrow path that leads<br>Into the forest dense and brown,<br>In the leafy darkness of the place,<br>One could not distinguish form nor face,<br>Only a bulk without a shape,<br>A darker shadow in the shade;<br>One scarce could say it moved or stayed,<br>Thus it was we made our escape!<br>A foaming brook, with many a bound,<br>Followed us like a playful hound;<br>Then leaped before us, and in the hollow<br>Paused, and waited for us to follow,<br>And seemed impatient, and afraid<br>That our tardy flight should be betrayed<br>By the sound our horses' hoof-beats made,<br>And when we reached the plain below,<br>He paused a moment and drew rein<br>To look back at the castle again;<br>And we saw the windows all aglow<br>With lights, that were passing to and fro;<br>Our hearts with terror ceased to beat;<br>The brook crept silent to our feet;<br>We knew what most we feared to know.<br>Then suddenly horns began to blow;<br>And we heard a shout, and a heavy tramp,<br>And our horses snorted in the damp<br>Night-air of the meadows green and wide,<br>And in a moment, side by side,<br>So close, they must have seemed but one,<br>The shadows across the moonlight run,<br>And another came, and swept behind,<br>Like the shadow of clouds before the wind!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">How I remember that breathless flight<br>Across the moors, in the summer night!<br>How under our feet the long, white road<br>Backward like a river flowed,<br>Sweeping with it fences and hedges,<br>Whilst farther away, and overhead,<br>Paler than I, with fear and dread,<br>The moon fled with us, as we fled<br>Along the forest's jagged edges!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">All this I can remember well;<br>But of what afterward befell<br>I nothing farther can recall<br>Than a blind, desperate, headlong fall;<br>The rest is a blank and darkness all.<br>When I awoke out of this swoon,<br>The sun was shining, not the moon,<br>Making a cross upon the wall<br>With the bars of my windows narrow and tall;<br>And I prayed to it, as I had been wont to pray,<br>From early childhood, day by day,<br>Each morning, as in bed I lay!<br>I was lying again in my own room!<br>And I thanked God, in my fever and pain,<br>That those shadows on the midnight plain<br>Were gone, and could not come again!<br>I struggled no longer with my doom!<br>This happened many years ago.<br>I left my father's home to come<br>Like Catherine to her martyrdom,<br>For blindly I esteemed it so.<br>And when I heard the convent door<br>Behind me close, to ope no more,<br>I felt it smite me like a blow,<br>Through all my limbs a shudder ran,<br>And on my bruised spirit fell<br>The dampness of my narrow cell<br>As night-air on a wounded man,<br>Giving intolerable pain.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">But now a better life began,<br>I felt the agony decrease<br>By slow degrees, then wholly cease,<br>Ending in perfect rest and peace!<br>It was not apathy, nor dulness,<br>That weighed and pressed upon my brain,<br>But the same passion I had given<br>To earth before, now turned to heaven<br>With all its overflowing fulness.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Alas! the world is full of peril!<br>The path that runs through the fairest meads,<br>On the sunniest side of the valley, leads<br>Into a region bleak and sterile!<br>Alike in the high-born and the lowly,<br>The will is feeble, and passion strong.<br>We cannot sever right from wrong;<br>Some falsehood mingles with all truth;<br>Nor is it strange the heart of youth<br>Should waver and comprehend but slowly<br>The things that are holy and unholy!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">But in this sacred and calm retreat,<br>We are all well and safely shielded<br>From winds that blow, and waves that beat,<br>From the cold, and rain, and blighting heat,<br>To which the strongest hearts have yielded.<br>Here we stand as the Virgins Seven,<br>For our celestial bridegroom yearning;<br>Our hearts are lamps forever burning,<br>With a steady and unwavering flame,<br>Pointing upward, forever the same,<br>Steadily upward toward the Heaven!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">The moon is hidden behind a cloud;<br>A sudden darkness fills the room,<br>And thy deep eyes, amid the gloom,<br>Shine like jewels in a shroud.<br>On the leaves is a sound of falling rain;<br>A bird, awakened in its nest,<br>Gives a faint twitter of unrest,<br>Then smoothes its plumes and sleeps again.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=409717" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">No other sounds than these I hear;<br>The hour of midnight must be near.<br>Thou art o'erspent with the day's fatigue<br>Of riding many a dusty league;<br>Sink, then, gently to thy slumber;<br>Me so many cares encumber,<br>So many ghosts, and forms of fright,<br>Have started from their graves to-night,<br>They have driven sleep from mine eyes away:<br>I will go down to the chapel and pray.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><a href="http://poems.citatepedia.com/">poem</a> by <strong><a rel="author" href="http://authors.citatepedia.com/by.php?a=Henry+Wadsworth+Longfellow">Henry Wadsworth Longfellow</a></strong></div>

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