16. Monks
for another small Album

{48}
(With lines on hinges to fit it.)

WHY dear Cousin,
                          why
Ask for verses,
when a poet's
fount of song is
                          dry?
Or, if aught be
                          there,
Harsh and chill, it
ill may touch the
hand of lady
                          fair.
Who can perfumed waters
                          bring
From a convent
                          spring? {49}

"Monks in the olden
                          time,
"They were rhymesters?"—
they were rhymesters,
but in Latin
                          rhyme.
Monks in the days of
                          old
Lived in secret,
in the Church's
kindly-sheltering
                          fold.
No bland meditators
                          they
Of a courtly
                          lay.

"They had visions
                          bright?"—
they had visions,
yet not sent in
slumbers soft and
                          light. {50}
No! a lesson
                          stern
First by vigils,
fast, and penance
theirs it was to
                          learn.
This their soul-ennobling
                          gain,
Joys wrought out by
                          pain.

"When from home they
                          stirr'd,
"Sweet their voices?"—
still, a blessing
closed their merriest
                          word;
And their gayest
                          smile
Told of musings
solitary,
and the hallow'd
                          aisle. {51}
"Songsters?"—hark! they answer!
                          round
Plaintive chantings
                          sound!

Grey his cowlèd
                          vest,
Whose strong heart has
pledged his service
to the cloister
                          blest.
Duly garb'd is
                          he,
As the frost-work
gems the branches
of yon stately
                          tree.
'Tis a danger-thwarting
                          spell,
And it fits me
                          well!

Oxford.
December, 1829.

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