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;