A WINTER MINSTER

The interlacing trees

Arise in Gothic traceries,

As if a vast cathedral deep and dim;

And through the solemn atmosphere

The low winds hymn

Such thoughts as solitude will hear.

To lead your way across

Gray carpet aisles of moss

Unto the chantry stalls,

The sumach candelabra are alight;

Along the cloister walls,

Like chorister and acolyte,

The shrubs are vested white;

The dutiful monastic oak

In his gray-friar cloak

Keeps penitential ways

And solemn orisons of praise;

For beads upon the cincture-vine

Red berries warm with color shine,

And to their constant rosary

The bedesmen firs incline;

And fair as frescoes be

Among the shrines of Italy,

These lights and shadows are,

Impalpable in gray and green

Upon the hills afar

And the gold westering sun between.

The music! Hark!

Oh, an it be no rapturous lark,

Yet has the lesser chant

The blessedness of song.

The snowbird mendicant

Intones the antiphon —

Et laboremus nos;

And all the grottoed aisles along,

Where servitors rejoice,

The chorused echoes run —

Oremus nos.

The inspiration of the breeze

Gives every reed a voice

From tenebrae and silences;

Over the valleys borne,

Come organ harmonies;

And when the low winds call,

The pines with miserere mourn

A requiem musical,

Softer than moonbeams fall

Across the starry oriels of night,

Flooding the azure round

With hushed delight

And sanctity of sound.