Sylvester meditated, thought
His days to solitude were brought.
Sight of a corpse within its grave!...
To be an eremite alone were brave.
Sylvester is a monk: and men
Grow frequent round his holy den:
Thence to a mount he leads them out,
Called Fannus ... through the wood they hear a shout.
Sylvester builds his cloister.—Hush!
Across the doorstep comes a rush,
And all the monks faint with a lure
That those in burgeoning woods lost deep endure.
Sylvester calls into the dark—
There is a breath of those that hark—
“Peace, peace! I am Sylvester! Peace!”
Trespass and echoes and sweet motions cease.
Sylvester in the woods, as still
Even as the grave that bowed his will,
When he became at first a monk,
Rules every power in oak and olive-trunk.
Sylvester conquers by his name:
King Fannus and all Fauns lie tame
Beneath it, and the wild-wood Cross,
That he hath planted deep into the moss.
Sylvester and his monks are clear
From any advent warm and drear
Through any door: but sometimes he
Looks with slant eyes through piles of leafery.
MACRINUS AGAINST TREES
“How bare! How all the lion-desert lies
Before your cell!
Behind, are leaves and boughs on which your eyes
Could, as the eyes of shepherd, on his flock,
That turn to the soft mass from barren rock,
Familiarly dwell.”
“O Traveller, for me the empty sands
Burning to white!
There nothing on the wilderness withstands
The soul or prayer. I would not look on trees;
My thoughts and will were shaken in their breeze,
And buried as by night.