o expiate Love that lacked." That term complete
An angel caught him o'er that severing gulf:--
Thenceforth he saw his God.'
With such discourse
Progress, though slow and interrupted oft,
The Saint of God, by no delay perturbed,
Made daily through his sacred charge. One eve
He walked by pastures arched along the sea,
With many companied. The on-flowing breeze
Glazed the green hill-tops, bending still one way
The glossy grasses: limitless below
The ocean mirror, clipped by cape or point
With low trees inland leaning, lay like lakes
Flooding rich lowlands. Southward far, a rock
Touched by a rainy beam, emerged from mist,
And shone, half green, half gold. That rock was Farne:
Though strangers, those that kenned it guessed its name:
'Doubtless 'twas there,' they said, 'our Saint abode!'
Then pressed around him, questioning: 'Rumour goes,
Father beloved, that in thine island home
Thou sat'st all day with hammer small in hand,
Shaping, from pebbles veined, miraculous beads
That save their wearers still from sword and lance:--
Are these things true? 'Smiling the Saint replied:
'True, and not true! That isle in part is spread
With pebbles divers-fashioned, some like beads:
I gathered such, and gave to many a guest,
Adding, "Such beads shall count thy nightly prayers;
Pray well; then fear no peril!"'
Others came
And thus demanded: 'Rumour fills the world,
Father, that birds miraculous crowned thine isle,
And awe-struck let thee lift them in thy hand,
Though scared by all beside.' Smiling once more
The Saint made answer, 'True, and yet not true!
Sea-birds elsewhere beheld not throng that isle;
A breed so loving and so firm in trust
That, yet unharmed by man, they flee not man;
Wondering they gaze; who wills may close upon them!
I signed a league betwixt that race and man,
Pledging the mariners who sought my cell
To reverence still that trust.' He ended thus:
'My friends, ye seek me still for parables;
Seek them from Nature rather:--here are two!
Those pebble-beads are words from Nature's lips
Exhorting man to pray; those fearless birds
Teach him that trust to innocence belongs
By right divine, and more avails than craft
To shield us from the aggressor.' Some were glad