Saboly

Seventeenth
Century—

Saboly is dead,

Is dead in Avignon!

He made the organ sing

As it had been a choir

Of angels of the Lord

Cleaving and brightening

The roof of dark St. Pierre!

The sound was of great glory,

It trembled all around

And quivered through our hearts.

Saboly is dead,

The maker of noëls

That all the people loved,

Saboly is dead—

And Yule is here again;

The great log on the hearth,

The crèche with all its lights,

The children gathering there;

The Kings are on the road—

The twilight road that leads

From out the purple East

The road from St. Remys!...

How shall we sing his songs

Who sang so well of these!

Folk say, when death was near

He set his hand to write

For us a new noël.

(So many a one before

He wrote with pen of gold!)

When he to Heaven came

I wis was silence then.

While Mary Mother bent

And raised him to his place,

The sweetness on his lips

Of that last, best noël!

But we—how can we sing

The songs he made for us,

Though Yule is here again!

For Saboly is dead,

Is dead in Avignon.

Edith M. Thomas

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