rt,
Union with severance. Thou hast lost, young friend,
But lately lost thy boyhood's dearest mate,
Thine earliest friend, a brother of thy heart,
True Christian soul though dwelling in the world;
Fear not such severance can extinguish love
Here, or hereafter! He whom most I loved
Was severed from me by the tract of years:
A child of nine years old was I, when first
Jarrow received me: pestilence ere long
Swept from that house her monks, save one alone,
Ceolfrid, then its abbot. Man and child,
We two the lonely cloisters paced; we two
Together chaunted in the desolate church:
I could not guess his thoughts; to him my ways
Were doubtless as the ways of some sick bird
Watched by a child. Not less I loved him well:
Me too he somewhat loved. Beneath one roof
We dwelt--and yet how severed! Save in God,
What know men, one of other? Here on earth,
Perhaps 'tis wiser to be kind to all
In large goodwill of helpful love, yet free,
Than link to one our heart--
Poor youth! that love which walks in narrow ways
Is tragic love, be sure.'
With gentle face
The novice spake his gratitude. Once more,
His hand upon the shoulder of the youth,
(For now they mounted slow a bosky dell)
The old man spake--yet not to him--in voice
Scarce louder than the murmuring pines close by;
For, by his being's law he seemed, like them,
At times when pensive memories in him stirred,
Vocal not less than visible: 'How great
Was he, our Founder! In that ample brow,
What brooding weight of genius! In his eye,
How strangely was the pathos edged with light!
How oft, his churches roaming, flashed its beam
From pillar on to pillar, resting long
On carven imagery of flower or fruit,
Or deep-dyed window whence the heavenly choirs
Gave joy to men below! With what a zeal
He drew the cunningest craftsmen from all climes
To express his thoughts in form; while yet his hand,
Like meanest hand among us, patient toiled
In garden and in bakehouse, threshed the corn,
Or drave the calves to milk-pail! Earthly rule
Had proved to him a weight intolerable;
In spiritual beauty, there and there alone,
Our Bennett Biscop found his native haunt,
The lucent planet of his soul's repose:
And yet--O wondrous might of human love--
One was there,