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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=374212" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>The Singing Of The Magnificat</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">A LEGEND</div><div style="margin:10px 0">IN midst of wide green pasture-lands, cut through <br>By lines of alders bordering deep-banked streams, <br>Where bulrushes and yellow iris grew, <br>And rest and peace, and all the flowers of dreams, <br>The Abbey stood--so still, it seemed a part <br>Of the marsh-country's almost pulseless heart. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>Where grey-green willows fringed the stream and pool, <br>The lazy meek-faced cattle strayed to graze, <br>Sheep in the meadows cropped the grasses cool, <br>And silver fish shone through the watery ways, <br>And many a load of fruit and load of corn <br>Into the Abbey storehouses was borne. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>Yet though so much they had of life's good things, <br>The monks but held them as a sacred trust, <br>Lent from the storehouse of the King of kings <br>Till they, His stewards, should crumble back to dust. <br>'Not as our own,' they said, 'but as the Lord's, <br>All that the stream yields, or the land affords.' </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>And all the villages and hamlets near <br>Knew the monks' wealth, and how their wealth was spent. <br>In tribulation, sickness, want, or fear, <br>First to the Abbey all the peasants went, <br>Certain to find a welcome, and to be <br>Helped in the hour of their extremity. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>When plague or sickness smote the people sore, <br>The Brothers prayed beside the dying bed, <br>And nursed the sick back into health once more, <br>And through the horror and the danger said: <br>'How good is God, Who has such love for us, <br>He lets us tend His suffering children thus!' </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>They in their simple ways and works were glad: <br>Yet all men must have sorrows of their own. <br>And so a bitter grief the Brothers had, <br>Nor mourned for others' heaviness alone. <br>This was the secret of their sorrowing, <br>That not a monk in all the house could sing! </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>Was it the damp air from the lovely marsh, <br>Or strain of scarcely intermitted prayer, <br>That made their voices, when they sang, as harsh <br>As any frog's that croaks in evening air-- <br>That made less music in their hymns to lie <br>Than in the hoarsest wild-fowl's hoarsest cry? </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>If love could sweeten voice to sing a song, <br>Theirs had been sweetest song was ever sung: <br>But their hearts' music reached their lips all wrong, <br>The soul's intent foiled by the traitorous tongue <br>That marred the chapel's peace, and seemed to scare <br>The rapt devotion lingering in the air. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>The birds that in the chapel built their nests, <br>And in the stone-work found their small lives fair, <br>Flew thence with hurled wings and fluttering breasts <br>When rang the bell to call the monks to prayer. <br>'Why will they sing,' they twittered, 'why at all? <br>In heaven their silence must be festival!' </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>The brothers prayed with penance and with tears <br>That God would let them give some little part <br>Out for the solace of their own sad ears <br>Of all the music crowded in their heart. <br>Their nature and the marsh-air had their way, <br>And still they sang more vilely every day. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>And all their prayers and fasts availing not <br>To give them voices sweet, their souls' desire, <br>The Abbot said, 'Gifts He did not allot <br>God at our hands will not again require; <br>The love He gives us He will ask again <br>In love to Him and to our fellow-men. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>'Praise Him we must, and since we cannot praise <br>As we would choose, we praise Him as we can. <br>In heaven we shall be taught the angels' ways <br>Of singing--we afford to wait a span. <br>In singing, as in toil, do ye your best; <br>God will adjust the balance--do the rest!' </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>But one good Brother, anxious to remove <br>This, the reproach now laid on them so long, <br>Rejected counsel, and for very love <br>Besought a Brother, skilled in art of song, <br>To come to them--his cloister far to leave-- <br>And sing Magnificat on Christmas Eve. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>So when each brown monk duly sought his place, <br>By two and two, slow pacing to the choir, <br>Shrined in his dark oak stall, the strange monk's face <br>Shone with a light as of devotion's fire, <br>Good, young and fair, his seemed a form wherein <br>Pure beauty left no room at all for sin. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>And when the time for singing it had come, <br>'Magnificat,' face raised, and voice, he sang: <br>Each in his stall the monks stood glad and dumb, <br>As through the chancel's dusk his voice outrang, <br>Pure, clear, and perfect--as the thrushes sing <br>Their first impulsive welcome of the spring. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>At the first notes the Abbot's heart spoke low: <br>'Oh God, accept this singing, seeing we, <br>Had we the power, would ever praise Thee so-- <br>Would ever, Lord, Thou know'st, sing thus for Thee; <br>Thus in our hearts Thy hymns are ever sung, <br>As he Thou blessest sings them with his tongue.' </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>But as the voice rose higher, and more sweet, <br>The Abbot's heart said, 'Thou hast heard us grieve, <br>And sent an angel from beside Thy feet, <br>To sing Magnificat on Christmas Eve; <br>To ease our ache of soul, and let us see <br>How we some day in heaven shall sing to Thee.' </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>Through the cold Christmas night the hymn rang out, <br>In perfect cadence, clear as sunlit rain-- <br>Such heavenly music that the birds without <br>Beat their warm wings against the window pane, <br>Scattering the frosted crystal snow outspread <br>Upon the stone-lace and the window-lead. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>The white moon through the window seemed to gaze <br>On the pure face and eyes the singer raised; <br>The storm-wind hushed the clamour of its ways, <br>God seemed to stoop to hear Himself thus praised, <br>And breathless all the Brothers stood, and still <br>Reached longing souls out to the music's thrill. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>Old years came back, and half-remembered hours, <br>Dreams of delight that never was to be, <br>Mothers' remembered kiss, the funeral flowers <br>Laid on the grave of life's felicity; <br>An infinite dear passion of regret <br>Swept through their hearts, and left their eyelids wet. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>The birds beat ever at the window, till <br>They broke the pane, and so could entrance win; <br>Their slender feet clung to the window-sill, <br>And though with them the bitter air came in, <br>The monks were glad that the birds too should hear, <br>Since to God's creatures all, His praise is dear. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>The lovely music waxed and waned, and sank, <br>And brought less conscious sadness in its train, <br>Unrecognised despair that thinks to thank <br>God for a joy renounced, a chosen pain-- <br>And deems that peace which is but stifled life <br>Dulled by a too-prolonged unfruitful strife. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>When, service done, the Brothers gathered round <br>To thank the singer--modest-eyed, said he: <br>'Not mine the grace, if grace indeed abound; <br>God gave the power, if any power there be; <br>If I in hymn or psalm clear voice can raise, <br>As His the gift, so His be all the praise!' </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>That night--the Abbot lying on his bed-- <br>A sudden flood of radiance on him fell, <br>Poured from the crucifix above his head, <br>And cast a stream of light across his cell-- <br>And in the fullest fervour of the light <br>An Angel stood, glittering, and great, and white. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>His wings of thousand rainbow clouds seemed made, <br>A thousand lamps of love shone in his eyes, <br>The light of dawn upon his brows was laid, <br>Odours of thousand flowers of Paradise <br>Filled all the cell, and through the heart there stirred <br>A sense of music that could not be heard. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>The Angel spoke--his voice was low and sweet <br>As the sea's murmur on low-lying shore-- <br>Or whisper of the wind in ripened wheat: <br>'Brother,' he said, 'the God we both adore <br>Has sent me down to ask, is all not right?-- <br>Why was Magnificat not sung to-night?' </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>Tranced in the joy the Angel's presence brought, <br>The Abbot answered: 'All these weary years <br>We have sung our best--but always have we thought <br>Our voices were unworthy heavenly ears; <br>And so to-night we found a clearer tongue, <br>And by it the Magnificat was sung.' </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>The Angel answered, 'All these happy years <br>In heaven has your Magnificat been heard; <br>This night alone, the angels' listening ears <br>Of all its music caught no single word. <br>Say, who is he whose goodness is not strong <br>Enough to bear the burden of his song?' </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>The Abbot named his name. 'Ah, why,' he cried, <br>'Have angels heard not what we found so dear?' <br>'Only pure hearts,' the Angel's voice replied, <br>'Can carry human songs up to God's ear; <br>To-night in heaven was missed the sweetest praise <br>That ever rises from earth's mud-stained maze. </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>'The monk who sang Magnificat is filled <br>With lust of praise, and with hypocrisy; <br>He sings for earth--in heaven his notes are stilled <br>By muffling weight of deadening vanity; <br>His heart is chained to earth, and cannot bear <br>His singing higher than the listening air! </div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br>'From purest hearts most perfect music springs, <br>And while you mourned your voices were not sweet, <br>Marred by the accident of earthly things,-- <br>In heaven, God, listening, judged your song complete. <br>The sweetest of earth's music came from you, <br>The music of a noble life and true!'</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Edith+Nesbit">Edith Nesbit</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=374212" data-title="The Singing Of The Magnificat de Edith Nesbit" data-description="A LEGEND

IN midst of wide green pasture-lands, cut through 
By lines of alders bordering deep-banked streams, 
Where bulrushes and yellow iris grew, 
And rest and peace, and all the flowers of dreams, 
The Abbey stood--so still, it seemed a part ..."></div>
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