Quoth Abbot Wygmore: “Why, O why
Distress yourself? You’ll surely die!”
The mason answered, trouble-torn,
“This long-vogued style is quite outworn!
“The upper archmould nohow serves
To meet the lower tracery curves:
“The ogees bend too far away
To give the flexures interplay.
“This it is causes my distress . . .
So it will ever be unless
“New forms be found to supersede
The circle when occasions need.
“To carry it out I have tried and toiled,
And now perforce must own me foiled!
“Jeerers will say: ‘Here was a man
Who could not end what he began!’”
—So passed that day, the next, the next;
The abbot scanned the task, perplexed;
The townsmen mustered all their wit
To fathom how to compass it,