The Friar's Tale-Good Night:
Of an old friar and his all-beauteous book
One of our poets in a lay hath told;
Picturing the monk, as with ecstatic look,
By a dim taper, in his cell of old,
He wrote God’s Word in crimson and in gold.
Whiles, ‘twixt the text, with unremitting care,
He traced initials, delicately bold,
And seraphs’ heads, and saints with silver hair.
A monument to his prodigious skill
The volume yet remains, a work of wonder still.
Thus the Epistles, all in gold, were done,
And the Apocalypse in red and blue;
Surely Christ’s ransom for his soul was won,
Who for the Lord so sweet a task could do;
Clothing the Word in loveliness anew;
Feasting the eye while nourishing the soul;
Humbly he wrought who did such toil pursue,
But grav’d his name on Fame’s eternal scroll.
At Cuthbert’s bier, when that great saint was dead.
The Gospels, thus adorned, lay open at his head.
It was a tome all precious to the sight
With colored capitals of rare designs,
By Eadfrid painted, the skill’d anchorite;
The text embower’d in a mass of vines;
Lilies and roses nestled ‘mid the lines;
A songbird here seemed warbling hymns of praise;
There a bright star, the fairest orb that shines,
The Star of Bethlehem, shot down its rays;
And on each leaf, with meek and lowly look,
A pale, sweet face of Christ lent pathos to the book.
The work, a model of the goldsmith’s art,
With precious stones was thickly studded o’er,
Bound and embellish’d by some grateful heart,
In honor of the good saint now no more.
No pains were spared, nor was there dearth of store,
To make it worthy of the honored dead.
Bilfrid, the bishop, with his own hand bore
The book, and laid it at St. Cuthbert’s head.
In the soft light that o’er the bier did stream,
The jewels on the book like twinkling stars did gleam.
Dear in God’s sight, as David doth record,
Is a saint’s death,—a holy life’s calm close;
Enoch ascended, living, to the Lord,
Triumphant o’er Death’s sting, and the world’s woes;
Elijah, too, attained Heaven’s pure repose,
Borne thither in a chariot of flame.
Not in the pomp in which it came to those,
The final summons to St. Cuthbert came.
Death like a shadow o’er his pathway crept;
The Saint, among the Just, on Abraham’s bosom slept.
Albion had claimed the ashes of her dead,
And for her loss her gentle tears did flow;
Oft for her faults his tender heart had bled,
And for her merits oft his breast did glow;
His blessings on her did he oft bestow;
His prayers for her ascended night and day;
Now that Death’s dart had laid the sweet Saint low,
What soil but hers might claim his hallowed clay?
In an old church wrapped’round with peaceful shade,
Until the Judgment Morn, let him at rest be laid.
In Durham church, within a cloister’s gloom,
In a sweet spot, apart from noise and din,
They were resolved to build a sculptured tomb,
Laying the book thereon, the bones within;
Making a shrine where, kneeling, they might win
The special favor of the Saint by prayer;
Might gain deliverance from the toils of sin,
Wherewith the Arch-fiend doth our souls ensnare.
When pious lives thus reach their earthly close,
‘Tis meet in some old church their relics should repose.
No tongue the beauty of that fane could tell;
On a great hill the minster towered high,
With lofty dome, and soaring pinnacle,
And taper spire that seemed to prop the sky;
A church to charm the pilgrim, passing by;
Of rock and wood the House of God was made;
Had many an archway pleasing to the eye,
And long, dim aisle and dusky colonnade.
Oft for the dead had Cuthbert there sung mass;
Death now had mowed him down; for lo, all flesh is grass.
There had he preached Christ’s Kingdom with great power,
And many converts to the Faith had won;
There had crowds thronged to hear him, hour by hour,
From there his fame throughout the world had run;
He was of Christendom the morning sun,
Whose broadening beams the Church’s way illumed;
Now that at last his bright career was done,
It seemed that Night her ancient sway resumed.
This verse, a flower of pure, poetic speech,
Is from a sermon culled, which there he once did preach:
“Satan (he said) hath sprynges, notte a fewe,
Snares to entoyl us, and oure peace destroy;
Redd wyne was ever hys most temptyng brewe,
And womankynd hys most approved decoy;
Ye who would cleave to ynnocence and joy,
Reck ye the rede, theyre blandyshments eschewe;
With purer pastymes the fleet hours employ,
And pleasure’s lyght by safer paths pursue.
Sylver and goulde are roots of grievous ill,
Botte wyne and woman’s wyles are perils deadlier still.”
Britain at that time by a barbarous host
Gravely was threaten’d; for, with sword and brand,
The Danes were thundering at her chalky coast,
Swarming in legions to invade the land;
‘Twas then that faithful, heaven-directed band,
The monks of Lindisfarne, made haste and came,
And took the corpse and holy book in hand,
And to the seashore safely brought the same.
A boat lay moored beside the beach meanwhile,
Waiting to waft them thence to Erin’s sheltering isle.
The monks had placed the corpse and book on board,
And put to sea; and all seemed going well;
When suddenly a tempest burst and roar’d,
And the deep yawned as yawns the mouth of Hell;
And fear and trembling on the oarsmen fell,
As the mad elements did rush and rave;
And some by prayer, and some by charm and spell,
Sought to subdue the wildly rolling wave.
But prayer and magic were alike in vain;
Beneath the foaming flood, the boat went down amain.
How did it chance? What answer may be made?
The sea grew still; God’s hand was stretched to save;
A passing sail bore down with timely aid,
And no man found that day a watery grave.
The Saint (’twas said) upon the surging wave,
Walk’d as Christ walk’d on stormy Galilee,
And succor to the floundering oarsmen gave,
And pluck’d them forth from the devouring sea.
But of the Book? Again what tongue shall say?
A thousand fathoms deep the precious volume lay.
Yet safe the corpse lay on the stranger ship,
Unchanged, save that the book was there no more,
And wondering awe kept silent every lip,
And no man spake of what had gone before.
Long afterwards upon the bleak seashore
The book was found without a scar or stain;
No trace of its deep ocean bath it bore,
Though long beneath the billows it had lain.
No mark of wave or wind or salt or sand;
‘Twas fresh as when, new-made, it came from Eadfrid’s
hand.
‘ Here was a miracle, as grand as those
The Prophets wrought of old in Palestine.”
A mystery that, rightly pondered, shows
The immortality of Truth divine.
Not since our Lord changed water into wine,
At Cana, was God’s power evinced more sure;
‘Twas Heaven itself that gave an added sign
That evermore the Gospel should endure.
Truth shall not pass, whatever else may fail,
Nor shall the gates of Hell against God’s Word prevail.
Some say the jewels gave the Saint offense
(Seeing that poverty he most had loved),
And that their loss was proof and evidence
To make vain show it illy men behoved;
And having thus their lavishness reproved,
He did again the jeweled tome restore,
That from the lids the gems might be removed,
Sold, and the price bestowed upon the poor.
At Cuthbert’s tomb the poor aye succor find;
Many are healed thereat,—the maim’d, the halt, the blind.”
** A miracle of St. Cuthbert, and sonnets by
Robert Edward Lee Gibson
Good Night and God Bless You All -from: Ye olde Jarra Scribe!
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