Classic Poem

I N Saint Just the silent bowers
Hear a drowsy funeral lay:
Bells are humming from the towers
For the monk who died to-day.

Look upon the dead man's forehead! — Round it
Runs a line of faded bloody red.
Once a crown of thorns, in penance, bound it?
No, a golden crown once pressed that head!

Comes a monk to that dead face, now,
Draws the cap down o'er the eye; —
Of the crown that evil trace, now,
Veiled from mortal sight shall lie.

See that arm! a sceptre once it wielded;
Half a world could feel its faintest stir;
Firmer, higher still, towards heaven he held it,
Like a rock that holds a towering fir!

That dead arm — there comes to raise it,
Now, a brother of St. Just,
Puts a cross therein, and lays it
On the bosom's lifeless dust.

Like the rainbow-stairway, heavenward soaring,
Shone the day that hailed his new-born eye;
Kings his cradle rocked, the child adoring,
Queenly voices sang his lullaby.

Now a choir of monks, with droning,
Dismal voice, the dirge prolong,
As they ever do, intoning
Burial hymn or Easter-song.

Lo! the sun goes down — that sun that never
To this dead man's empire said farewell;
For what these call evening-red, is ever
Morning-red to those that westward dwell.

Softly, now, the bells are ringing:
Lovely valleys, fare ye well!
Hoarsely, now, the monks are singing:
World of vanity, farewell!

Through church windows yet once more is flaming
On the bier the sun's great eye of red,
Here to see, what there he'll go proclaiming,
How the ruler of two worlds lies dead!

Swain and herdsmaid, as the pealing
Bell and dirge sound far and wide,
Bare their heads, and pray with feeling
For the pious monk that died.