SAINT CADOC’S BELL.
I.
SAILOR! with wonder thou hearest me,
Moored where the roots of thine anchors be,
Tolling and wailing, bursting and failing, afar in the heart of the sea.
A bell was I of Pagan lands
Forged and welded in might and beauty,
But captured by Christian chivalry,
And set in a belfry by godly hands,
With chrisms and benedictions three,
For a fourfold consecrated duty:
To summon to pray, to peal for the fray,
To measure the hours, to moan for the dead;
To moan for the dead, ah me! ah me!
Where the wild gold parasites suck and spread,
Where the sea-flower rears her dreamy head;
In the grots of immortality
The cool weird singing mermaids dwell in;
In the still city, with its empurpled air
Shaken upon the eye from bastions fair
Of coral, and pearl, and unbought jasper’s glisten,
I toll and wail, I burst and fail, ah, listen!
I, the holy bell, the gift of the Lord Llewellyn,
Now the keel of a Cornish ship looms over my prison,
Call from the underworld in mine old despair.
II.
They brought me in my virgin fame
To the carven minster wonder-high,
Close to the glorious sun and sky,
With song, and jubilee, and acclaim:
The fountains brimming with wine sprayed out on the crowd;
In the chapel-porches the viols and harps clanged loud,
And the slim maids danced a solemn measure, ever and aye the same,
Singing: ‘Behold, we hang our bell in
The freedom of spring, in the golden weather,
The gift of the Lord Llewellyn,
Redeemed from heathenry and strange shame,
The lion-strong bell, for our service at last led hither,
Flower-woven, caressed, and in Christ made willing and tame.’
But ere the pleased stir of the people had died,
Llewellyn, fresh home from the wars, with his soldierly stride
Climbed, bearded and splendid in mail, and his only young child
Held up from his shoulder in sight of them all; till they cried
Peal on peal of delight when the rosy babe turned, and her lip
Laid sweetly upon me in benison mild.
Yea, sailor! and thou that hearest my voice from thy ship,
Thou knowest my sorrow’s beginning, thou knowest, ah me!
Whence my tolling and wailing, my breaking and failing, afar in the heart of the sea.
III.
I served the Lord ten years and a day,
In Saint Cadoc’s church by the surging bay;
And housed with the gathering webs and must,
’Mid whirring of velvety wings outside,
In calm and in wind, brooding over the tide,
And the bright massed roofs, and the crags’ array,
My strong life, innocent and just,
Fell of a sudden to ashes and dust,
And on my neck hotly the demon laid the bare rod of his sway!