“I know not if the spirit breath,
Meets spirit on the road of death,
Or falleth like a thin, white thread
Among the under dead.
“I know not whether, passing by,
One rapid moment, he and I,
His face upturned to coming crown,
Mine anguished, bending down,
“Shall then know all; but boy, when near
Thy feet approach where tier on tier,
God’s minstrels face the Trinity,
In that place made for me,
“But mine no longer, seek thou there
One with thine eyes and golden hair,
Gold as his broidered vesture is,
And say whose soul won his.
“Perchance, though there no sorrow dims,
The tears will mount to his eyes’ brims,
And I shall live, his sweetest thought,
For what my love hath wrought.
“Again the demon calls, I come.
See, pure boy, let thy lips be dumb,
One last atonement lifts to-night
A lost soul into light.”
He kissed the boy upon the brow:
“Yea, very like to him art thou,
When we sat pure on mother’s knee,
Farewell, eternally.”
The Abbot passed into the gloom,
The moonlight flooded all the room,
The boy sat stark from hour to hour,
Chained by unearthly power.
But lo, when, in the matin time,
The bells rang out the hour of prime,
From cloistered aisle and chapel stair
A wild cry rent the air.
Not yet quite cold, dead in his blood,
With face averted from the Rood,
The Abbot lay on chapel stone,
His eyes still woe-begone.
No bell was rung, no mass was said,
They buried the dishonoured dead
Out in the road which crossed the wood,
In dark and solitude.