Abbot—That it is strange that you, a priest of God,
Could see an angel's track upon a slope
And say: "Here went a devil up the rocks."
Father Benedict—It is too dark.
Abbot— 'Twill ever be too dark
To see aught but an angel in that gulch.
Father Benedict—'Tis midnight.
Abbot— No; for yonder peaks are flushed,
And there bright wings are wasting in the dawn.
Father Benedict—Father, what do you mean?
Abbot—(Closing his eyes.) Listen, Benedict.
In an old abbey down in Italy
There hangs an ancient chime of seven bells.
Oft when a child I heard them in the dawn
Singing like angels in the Apennines,
Their tones so blended, so harmoniously
Tuned to the planets that, when twilight fell,
They were the echoes of the Pleiades.
Those old, old bells! I hear them still sometimes.
We children called them by the golden names
Archangels wear. Well, in a storm one night
Raphael went down. Some say a huge black hand
Strangled him in his tower and hurled him down.
And others say—mark, Benedict—that God—
Father Benedict—Anathema!
Abbot— God's hand that shaped the spheres
And hung them in the belfry of the night
To ring through heaven an universal mass,
And set the holy bells of earth in tune,
And set our hearts in tune with holy bells.
That, in the blue cathedral of the air,
One chant might rise from hearts and bells and spheres,
Some say that His, God's hand, threw down that bell.
Father Benedict—I say, anathema!