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.