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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=456068" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Prophecy Of St. Oran: Part II</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=456068" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I.<br>THERE was a windless mere, on whose smooth breast<br>A little island, flushed with purple bloom,<br>Lay gently cradled like a moorhen's nest:<br>It glowed like some rich jewel 'mid the gloom<br>Of sluggish leagues of peat and black morass,<br>Without or shrub or tree or blade of grass.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=456068" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>II.<br>But on the isle itself the birch was seen<br>With its ethereal foliage, like some haze<br>Floating among the rowan's vivid green;<br>The ground with fern all feathered, and ablaze<br>With heath's and harebell's hyacinthine hue,<br>Was mirrored in the wave's intenser blue.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=456068" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>III.<br>This was the immemorial isle of graves,<br>Here, under nameless mound and dateless stone,<br>The generations, like successive waves,<br>Had rolled one o'er the other, and had gone<br>As these go, indistinguishably fused<br>Their separate lives in common death confused.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=456068" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>IV.<br>And here amid the dead Columba chose<br>To found God's holy house and sow His word;<br>Already here and there the walls arose,<br>Built from the stones imbedded in the sward;<br>These did the natives without mortar pile,<br>As was the ancient custom of their isle.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=456068" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>V.<br>For many of them to the work were won<br>By reverence for the saint, and thus apace<br>The chapel grew which they had first begun<br>As dedicate to God's perpetual praise;<br>So many of the monks again were free<br>To give thought wholly to their ministry.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=456068" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>VI.<br>And ever first in hastening to his task<br>St. Oran was, though last to seek repose;<br>Columba's best beloved, he still would ask<br>For heaviest share of duty, while he chose<br>Rude penances, till shadow-like he grew<br>With fasts and vigils that the flesh subdue.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=456068" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>VII.<br>Yet there was that which would not be subdued--<br>A shape, a presence haunting every dream;<br>Fair as the moon that shines above a flood,<br>And ever trembles on the trembling stream;<br>Sweet as some gust of fragrance, unaware<br>Stealing upon us on the summer air.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=456068" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>VIII.<br>Even so it stole upon his ravished heart,<br>Suffusing every fibre with delight,<br>Till from his troubled slumber he would start,<br>And, as with ague shivering and affright,<br>Catch broken speech low murmuring in his ears,<br>And feel his eyelids ache with unshed tears.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=456068" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>IX.<br>But it befell one windy afternoon,<br>While monks and men were busied with the roof,<br>Laying the beams through which the sun and moon<br>Might shed their light as yet without reproof,<br>That there came one across the lonely waste<br>Toward these men of God, crying in haste,--</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=456068" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>X.<br>'Ye say ye came to save us, save us then!<br>Save us if ye spake truth, and not a lie!<br>Famine and fever stalk among us,--men,<br>Women, and children are struck down and die!<br>For lo, the murrain smites our cowering sheep,<br>The fishers haul no fish from out the deep.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=456068" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>XI.<br>'Ye tell us that your God did multiply<br>A few small fishes, wherewithal He fed<br>A multitude; in sooth, if 'tis no lie,<br>Then come, ye holy men, and give us bread!<br>For they are starving by the waterside,--<br>Come then, and give us bread,' he loudly cried.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=456068" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>XII.<br>He was a man inspiring dread surprise,<br>Half-naked, with long glibs of bristling hair<br>In fiery meshes tumbling o'er his eyes,<br>Which, like a famished wolf's from out its lair,<br>Glanced restlessly; his dog behind him came,<br>Whose lolling tongue hung down like scarlet flame.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=456068" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>XIII.<br>'Let me arise, and go to them withal!'<br>Cried Oran, flinging down his implement:<br>'This heavy tribulation is a call<br>From the Most High; a blessed instrument<br>To compass their salvation: let me go<br>Teach them what mercy worketh in their woe.'</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=456068" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>XIV.<br>'Go then, my son, and God go with thee still,<br>While I abide to speed His temple here,'<br>Said St. Columba; 'and thy basket fill<br>With herbs and cordials, also wine to cheer<br>And bread to feed the poor, so that their days<br>May still endure to God's eternal praise.'</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=456068" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>XV.<br>Then Oran and that wild man forth did fare,<br>And o'er the little lake they rowed in haste,<br>And mounting each a small and shaggy mare,<br>They ambled o'er that solitary waste,<br>Then through a sterile glen their road did lie<br>Whose shrouded peaks loomed awfully on high.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=456068" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>XVI.<br>When for a mile or two they thus had gone,<br>The mountains opened wide on either hand,<br>And lo, amid those labyrinths of stone<br>The sea had got entangled in the land,<br>And turned and twisted, struggling to get free,<br>And be once more the immeasurable sea.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=456068" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>XVII.<br>It was a sorcerous, elemental place,<br>O'er which there now came rushing from the plain--<br>Like some dark host whom yelling victors chase--<br>A moving pillar of resistless rain<br>Shivering the gleaming lances in its flight<br>Against the bastions of each monstrous height.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=456068" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>XVIII.<br>Fast, fast it raced before the roaring gale,<br>With shrieks and frenzied howlings that did shake<br>The very stones with long-resounding wail,<br>And in outlying gorges would it wake<br>The startled echo's sympathetic scream,<br>Then whirling on would vanish like a dream,--</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=456068" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>XIX.<br>Would vanish dream-like, whither no man knows,<br>Fading afar in vaporous gulfs of light,<br>While the wet mountain-tops flushed like a rose,<br>And following the spent tempest in its flight<br>Its hues ethereal mantling o'er the gloom,<br>There glowed the rainbow's evanescent bloom.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=456068" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>XX.<br>And while that rain still drenched him to the skin,<br>St. Oran, unappalled, intoned a psalm,<br>And lifting up his voice amidst the din,<br>He sang, 'We laud Thee, Lord, through storm and calm,<br>In the revolving stars we see Thine hand,<br>The sun and moon rise as Thou dost command.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=456068" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>XXI.<br>'We laud Thee for the evening and the morn,<br>And the prolific seasons' changing boon,<br>For singing-birds, and flowers, and ripening corn,<br>For tides that rise and fall beneath the moon;<br>As in a mirror darkling do we see<br>The shadow that Thou castest on the sea.'</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=456068" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>XXII.<br>Up many a wild ascent, down many a steep<br>Clothed with scant herbage, rode that battered pair,<br>Where lay the bleaching bones of mangled sheep,<br>And carrion crows wheeled hoarsely in the air;<br>At last through mist and darkness they espied<br>Small lights that twinkled by the waterside.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=456068" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>XXIII.<br>There in dark turf-built hovels close to earth<br>Lay the poor sufferers on their beds of heath,<br>Gnawed to the very bone by cruel dearth,<br>Cold to the marrow with approaching death;<br>Thither came Oran like some vision bright,<br>And ministered to each one through the night.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=456068" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>XXIV.<br>And so dispensing alms he went and came,<br>Stooping to enter the last house of all;<br>There, by the peat-fire's orange-coloured flame,<br>Whose flashes fitfully did rise and fall<br>On the smoke-blackened rafters--sat a crone<br>Ancient it might be as the lichened stone.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=456068" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>XXV.<br>Fast through her bony fingers flies the thread,<br>And as her foot still turns the whirring wheel,<br>She seems to spin the yarn of quick and dead!<br>But oh, what makes St. Oran's senses reel?<br>Whose is the shape clad in its golden hair<br>That turns and tosses on the pallet there?</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=456068" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>XXVI.<br>Like some wan water lily veiled in mist<br>When puffs of wind its tender petals shake,<br>Whose chalice by the shining moonbeams kissed<br>Sways to and fro upon the swelling lake,<br>So white--so wan--so wonderfully fair,<br>Showed Mona tossing mid her golden hair.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=456068" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>XXVII.<br>What should he do? Ah, whither should he turn?<br>Why had God let this trial come again?<br>Her beauty, half-revealed, did straightly burn<br>Through his hot eyeballs to his kindling brain.<br>Was it his duty to go hence or stay?<br>He wavered--gazed on her--then turned away.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=456068" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>XXVIII.<br>But that old woman tottered to the door<br>And clutched his cassock with a shaking hand,<br>And mumbled, 'Priest, ah! dost thou shun the poor?<br>They say that ye go bragging through the land<br>Of some new God called Christian Charity;<br>But in our need ye turn from us and fly.'</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=456068" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>XXIX.<br>So spake the crone, but Oran bowed his head<br>And murmured, 'If thou bid'st me, I abide.'<br>With downcast eyes he turned towards the bed<br>In fervent prayer low kneeling by its side:<br>At last he rose, pale, cold, and deadly still,<br>With heart subdued to his stern Maker's will.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=456068" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>XXX.<br>Thus through her fever did he tend the maid,<br>Who babbled wildly in delirious trance<br>Of her lost home, and her loved kindred laid<br>In alien earth--and of a countenance<br>Fair as a spirit's comforting her pain,<br>But soon withdrawn to its own heaven again.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=456068" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>XXXI.<br>All this unflinching would the monk endure,<br>And having cured her body's sickness, strove<br>With double zeal her sicker soul to cure:<br>But when he told her of the Saviour's love,<br>Of sin, and its atonement, and free grace,<br>She looked in puzzled wonder on his face.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=456068" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>XXXII.<br>She could not understand his mournful creed,<br>Nor knew, poor child, of what she should repent,<br>Nor why her heart was wicked, and had need<br>That some poor pitying God should once have spent<br>His blood for her five hundred years ago--<br>Ancestral voices never told her so!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=456068" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>XXXIII.<br>She could not understand, but she could feel!<br>And while she sat before him by the flame<br>The pathos of his pleading voice would steal<br>Sweeter than sweetest music through her frame,<br>And as the ocean murmur in a shell<br>Through her dim soul his solemn accents swell.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=456068" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>XXXIV.<br>He was the air she breathed--all living things<br>Were pale reflections of him--as the hart<br>In desert places thirsts for water-springs,<br>Even thus for him she thirsted in her heart;<br>To her it seemed as if life's aim and end<br>Were just to lay her hand within his hand.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=456068" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>XXXV.<br>Her eyes were full of love as stars of light,<br>And pierced the cold obstructive atmosphere<br>Of his joy-killing creed, and did ignite<br>His inmost spirit of sense with fire as clear<br>And radiant as their own--their beaming looks<br>Mingled as flames of fire or meeting brooks.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=456068" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>XXXVI.<br>Was he not young and beautiful?--in face<br>Like to that radiant god whose flame divine<br>The Druid worshipped in those younger days<br>Ere sin had stamped the green earth with its sign,<br>Had made the loveliness of flowers a snare,<br>And bid frail man of woman's love beware.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=456068" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>XXXVII.<br>Oh, not for him, through all the lonely years<br>Never for him a woman's love might bloom;<br>Her smiles would never cheer him, nor her tears<br>Fall softly on his unlamented tomb;<br>Never till quenched in death's supreme eclipse<br>His lips would know the sweetness of her lips.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=456068" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>XXXVIII.<br>Oh God! would nothing quench that secret fire,<br>Nor yet assuage that hunger of the heart?<br>To feel this flagellation of desire,<br>To be so near, yet evermore apart,<br>Never to clasp this woman as a wife--<br>This was the crowning penance of his life.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=456068" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>XXXIX.<br>But lo! one day at dusk they were alone,<br>The rain was beating down on roof and wall,<br>The round of earth with solid rock and stone<br>Had turned phantasmal in its misty pall:<br>They were alone, but neither spake a word--<br>Only their hearts in throbbing might be heard.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=456068" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>XL.<br>Whose is that low involuntary cry<br>That like a flash of lightning shook each frame<br>With thrill electric? Simultaneously<br>Their yearning lips had sobbed each other's name!<br>With swift instinctive dread they move apart<br>While magnet-like each draws the other's heart.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=456068" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>XLI.<br>What boots it thus to struggle with his sin,<br>So much more sweet than all his virtues were?<br>Like a great flood let all her love roll in<br>And his soul stifle mid her golden hair!<br>And so he barters his eternal bliss<br>For the divine delirium of her kiss!</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=456068" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>XLII.<br>What cares he for his soul's salvation now?<br>Let it go to perdition evermore<br>For breaking that accursed monastic vow<br>Which cankers a man's nature to the core;<br>For he had striven as never mortal strove,<br>But than his Lord a mightier lord was Love.</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=Mathilde+Blind">Mathilde Blind</a></strong></div>