“Things fail to spring from nought at call,
And art-beginnings most of all.
“He did but what all artists do,
Wait upon Nature for his cue.”
—“Had you been here to tell them so
Lord Abbot, sixty years ago,
“The mason, now long underground,
Doubtless a different fate had found.
“He passed into oblivion dim,
And none knew what became of him!
“His name? ’Twas of some common kind
And now has faded out of mind.”
The Abbot: “It shall not be hid!
I’ll trace it.” . . . But he never did.
—When longer yet dank death had wormed
The brain wherein the style had germed
From Gloucester church it flew afar—
The style called Perpendicular.—
To Winton and to Westminster
It ranged, and grew still beautifuller: