Copying Architecture In An Old Minster
(Wimborne)

     How smartly the quarters of the hour march by
        That the jack-o'-clock never forgets;
     Ding-dong; and before I have traced a cusp's eye,
Or got the true twist of the ogee over,
        A double ding-dong ricochetts.

     Just so did he clang here before I came,
        And so will he clang when I'm gone
     Through the Minster's cavernous hollows—the same
Tale of hours never more to be will he deliver
        To the speechless midnight and dawn!

     I grow to conceive it a call to ghosts,
        Whose mould lies below and around.
     Yes; the next "Come, come," draws them out from their posts,
And they gather, and one shade appears, and another,
        As the eve-damps creep from the ground.

      See—a Courtenay stands by his quatre-foiled tomb,
        And a Duke and his Duchess near;
     And one Sir Edmund in columned gloom,
And a Saxon king by the presbytery chamber;
        And shapes unknown in the rear.
     Maybe they have met for a parle on some plan
        To better ail-stricken mankind;
     I catch their cheepings, though thinner than
The overhead creak of a passager's pinion
        When leaving land behind.

     Or perhaps they speak to the yet unborn,
         And caution them not to come
     To a world so ancient and trouble-torn,
Of foiled intents, vain lovingkindness,
         And ardours chilled and numb.

     They waste to fog as I stir and stand,
         And move from the arched recess,
     And pick up the drawing that slipped from my hand,
And feel for the pencil I dropped in the cranny
         In a moment's forgetfulness.