Ballads of Peace in War

A WINTER MINSTER

    (For Fr. C. L. O'Donnell)

    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.