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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=341355" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Brother Benedict</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">Brother Benedict rose and left his cell<br>With the last slow swing of the evening bell.<br>In his hand he carried his only book,<br>And he followed the path to the Abbey brook,<br>And, crossing the stepping-stones, paused midway,<br>For the journeying water seemed to say,<br>Benedicite.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But when he stood on the other bank,<br>The flags rose tall, and the grass grew rank,<br>And the sorrel red and the white meadow-sweet<br>Shook their dust on his sandalled feet,<br>And, lifting their heads where his girdle hung,<br>Would surely have said had they found a tongue,<br>Benedicite.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Onward and upward he clomb and wound,<br>Bruising the thyme on the nibbled ground<br>Here and there, in the untrimmed brake,<br>The dog-rose bloomed for its own sweet sake;<br>The woodbine clambered up out of reach,<br>But the scent of them all breathed as plain as speech,<br>Benedicite.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Shortly he came to a leafy nook,<br>Where wind never entered nor branch ever shook.<br>Itself was the only thing in sight,<br>And the rest of the world was shut out quite.<br>'Twas as self-contained as the holy place<br>Where the children quire with upturned face,<br>Benedicite.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">A dell so curtained with trunks and boughs,<br>That in hours when the ringdove coos to his spouse,<br>The sun to its heart scarce a way could win.<br>But the trees now had drawn all their shadows in;<br>There was nothing but scent in the dewy air,<br>And the silence seemed saying in mental prayer,<br>Benedicite.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Gainst the trunk of a beech, round, smooth, and gray,<br>Brother Benedict leaned, with intent to pray,<br>And opened his book: with vellum bound;<br>Within, red letters on faded ground;<br>Pater, and Ave, and saving Creed:-<br>But look where you would, you seemed to read,<br>Benedicite.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He scarce had a verse of his office said,<br>Ere a bird in the branches overhead<br>Began to warble so sweet a strain,<br>That, strive as he would, still he strove in vain<br>To close his ears; so he closed his book,<br>While the unseen throat to the air outshook<br>Benedicite.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">'Twas a song that rippled, and revelled, and ran<br>Ever back to the note whence it began;<br>Rising, and falling, and never did stay,<br>Like a fountain that feeds on itself all day,<br>Wanting no answer, answering none,<br>But beginning again as each verse was done,<br>Benedicite.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">It brought an ecstasy into his face,<br>It weaned his senses from time and space,<br>It carried him off to worlds unseen,<br>And showed him what is not and ne'er has been,<br>Transporting his soul to those realms of calm,<br>More blessëd and blessing than even the psalm,<br>Benedicite.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then, carolling still, it drew him thence<br>Slowly back to the spheres of sense,<br>But held him awhile where self expires,<br>And vague recollections and vague desires<br>Banish the burden of things that are,<br>And angels seem canticling, faint and far,<br>Benedicite.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then across him there flitted the days that are dead,<br>And those that will follow when these are fled;<br>Generations of sorrow, wave after wave,<br>With their samesome journey from womb to grave;<br>Men's love of the fleshly sweets that sting,<br>And the comfort that comes when we kneel and sing,<br>Benedicite.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He suddenly started and gazed around,<br>For silence can waken as well as sound,<br>And the bird had ceased singing. The dewy air<br>Still was immersed in mental prayer.<br>Time seemed to have stopped. So he quickened pace,<br>But forgot not to say ere he left the lone place,<br>Benedicite.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Downward he wended, and under his feet,<br>As on mounting, the bruised thyme answered sweet;<br>As before, in the brake the dog-rose bloomed,<br>And the woodbine with fragrance the hedge perfumed;<br>And the white meadow-sweet and the sorrel red,<br>Had they found a tongue, would still surely have said,<br>Benedicite.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But where were the flags and the tall rank grass,<br>And the stepping-stones smooth for his feet to pass?<br>Were they swept away? Did he wake or dream?<br>A bridge that he knew not spanned the stream;<br>Though under its archway he still could hear<br>The journeying water purling clear,<br>Benedicite.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Where had he wandered? This never could<br>Be the spot where the Abbey orchard stood?<br>Where the filberts once mellowed, lay tumbled blocks,<br>And cherry stumps peered through tares and docks;<br>A rough plot stretched where in times gone by<br>The plump apples dropped to the joyous cry,<br>Benedicite.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The gateway had vanished, the portal flown,<br>The walls of the Abbey were ivy-grown;<br>The arches were shattered, the roof was gone,<br>The mullions were mouldering one by one;<br>Wrecked was the oriel's tracery light<br>That the sun streamed through when they met to recite<br>Benedicite.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Chancel and choir and nave and aisle<br>Were but one ruinous vacant pile.<br>So utter the havoc, you could not tell<br>Which was corridor, cloister, cell.<br>Cow-grass, and foxglove, and waving weed,<br>Covered the scrolls where you used to read,<br>Benedicite.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">High up where of old the belfry towered,<br>An elder had rooted and whitely flowered:<br>Surviving ruin and rain and wind,<br>Below it a lichened gurgoyle grinned.<br>Though birds were chirping and flitting about,<br>They paused not to treble the anthem devout,<br>Benedicite.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Then he went where the Abbot was wont to lay<br>His children to rest till the Judgment Day,<br>And at length in the grass the name he found<br>Of a friar he fancied alive and sound.<br>The slab was hoary, the carving blurred,<br>And he rather guessed than could read the word,<br>Benedicite.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">He sate him down on a fretted stone,<br>Where rains had beaten and winds had blown,<br>And opened his office-book, and read<br>The prayers that we read for our loved ones dead,<br>While nightfall crept on the twilight air,<br>And darkened the page of the final prayer,<br>Benedicite.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">But to murkiest gloom when the gloaming did wane,<br>In the air there still floated a shadowy strain.<br>'Twas distilled with the dew, it was showered from the star,<br>It was murmuring near, it was tingling afar;<br>In silence it sounded, in darkness it shone,<br>And in sleep that is deepest it wakeful dreamed on,<br>Benedicite.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Do you ask what had witched Brother Benedict's ears?<br>The bird had been singing a thousand years:<br>Sweetly confounding in its sweet lay<br>To-day, to-morrow, and yesterday.<br>Time? What is Time but a fiction vain,<br>To him that o'erhears the Eternal strain,<br>Benedicite?</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Alfred+Austin">Alfred Austin</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=341355" data-title="Brother Benedict de Alfred Austin" data-description="Brother Benedict rose and left his cell
With the last slow swing of the evening bell.
In his hand he carried his only book,
And he followed the path to the Abbey brook,
And, crossing the stepping-stones, paused midway,
For the journeying water see..."></div>
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