In the brown shadow of the transept door, Gray kings and granite prophets overhead, Which are so ancient they can age no more, A beggar begs his bread. He too is old—so old, and worn, and still, He seems a part of those gaunt sculptures there By wizard masons dowered with power and will To moan sometimes in prayer, To moan in prayer, moving thin carven lips, And with faint senses striving to drink in Some golden sound, which peradventure slips From the altar's heart within. What is thy prayer? Is it a plaintive praise, An intercession, or an anguished plaint, Remorse, O sinner, for wild vanished days, Or ecstasy, O saint? And through long hours when thou art wont to sit In moveless silence, what inspires thy thought? Is thine an utter drowsing? Or shall wit Still travail, memory-fraught? Hear'st thou old battles? Wast thou one of those Whose angry fire-locks made the hillsides ring When, clad in skins and rags, the Chouans rose To die for Church and King? Or dost thou view in weird and sad array The long-dead Cymry—they of whom men tell That 'always to the war they marched away,' And that 'they always fell'? So touching are thine eyes which cannot see, So great a resignation haunts thy face, I often think that I behold in thee The symbol of thy race, Not as it was when bards, Armorican Sang the high pageant of their Age of Gold, But as it is, a long-tressed sombre man, Exceeding poor and old, With somewhat in his eyes for some to read, Albeit dimmed with years and scarcely felt,— The mystery of an antique deathless Creed, The glamour of the Celt! |