Home > Authors Index > Browse all available works of Thomas Hardy > Text of Abbey Mason
A poem by Thomas Hardy |
||
The Abbey Mason |
||
________________________________________________
Title: The Abbey Mason Author: Thomas Hardy [More Titles by Hardy] (Inventor of the "Perpendicular" Style of Gothic Architecture)
The new-vamped Abbey shaped apace (The church which, at an after date, Panel and circumscribing wall Rose roundabout the Norman core Encasing magically the old The trowels rang out, and tracery Men toiled for pleasure more than pay, Till, in due course, the transept part - Home-coming thence he tossed and turned "What fearful visions have inspired "As if your tools were in your hand "You have thumped as you were working hard: "What then's amiss. What eating care He answered not, but churchward went, And fumbled there the livelong day - 'Twas said, "The master-mason's ill!" Quoth Abbot Wygmore: "Why, O why The mason answered, trouble-torn, "The upper archmould nohow serves "The ogees bend too far away "This it is causes my distress . . . "New forms be found to supersede "To carry it out I have tried and toiled, "Jeerers will say: 'Here was a man - So passed that day, the next, the next; The townsmen mustered all their wit But no raw artistries availed - One night he tossed, all open-eyed, Scattering the rushes of the floor And sought the sizing pile, whereon Through freezing rain, that drenched the board Chalked phantasies in vain begot In front of which he dully stood, He closelier looked; then looked again: Whose icicled drops deformed the lines So that they streamed in small white threads Of arcs below, uniting them - At once, with eyes that struck out sparks, Then laughs aloud. The thing was done - Now in his joy he grew aware And, turning, saw the abbot, who Onward to Prime the abbot went, - Men now discerned as days revolved Templates were cut, fresh lines were chalked And the work swelled and mounted higher, Here jambs with transoms fixed between, There little mullions thinly sawn "We knew," men said, "the thing would go "And, once fulfilled what he has designed, When matters stood thus poised awhile, The master-mason on an eve - "The abbot spoke to me to-day: "He knows the source as well as I "He said: 'You pride yourself too much "'Surely the hand of God it is "'Disclosing by the frost and rain "'Hence the devices deemed so great "I feel the abbot's words are just, "Can a man welcome praise and pelf "So, I shall own the deft design "What!" said she. "Praise your works ensure "Your beaming and beneficent star? "Why, think awhile. Had not your zest "Had you not gone there ere the day - But, though his good wife argued so, That not unaided sprang the thought But that by frost when dawn was dim "Yet," said the townspeople thereat, But he--chafed, childlike, in extremes - Aloofly scrupled to admit And diffidently made request - As none could doubt the abbot's word, The mason was at length believed And soon began to lose the fame - Time passed, and like a living thing And workmen died, and young ones grew, And Abbots Wygmore and Staunton went But not till years had far progressed Standing within the well-graced aisle, And some decrepit sage detailed The cloud-cast waters in their whim Who struck each arc, and made each mould; As sole begetter him who applied And how the master lost renown, - Then Horton, who in inner thought Replied: "Nay; art can but transmute; "Things fail to spring from nought at call, "He did but what all artists do, - "Had you been here to tell them so "The mason, now long underground, "He passed into oblivion dim, "His name? 'Twas of some common kind The Abbot: "It shall not be hid! - When longer yet dank death had wormed From Gloucester church it flew afar - To Winton and to Westminster From Solway Frith to Dover Strand Not only on cathedral walls Till every edifice in the isle And till, long having played its part, - Well: when in Wessex on your rounds, And enter Gloucester: seek the quoin And, gazing at the forms there flung The ogee arches transom-topped, Petrified lacework--lightly lined Muse that some minds so modest be (Like him who crystallized on this spot And many a mediaeval one While others boom a baseless claim, [The end] GO TO TOP OF SCREEN |