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Alfred Noyes - The Young FriarAlfred Noyes - The Young Friar
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When leaves broke out on the wild briar,     And bells for matins rung, Sorrow came to the old friar     Hundreds of years ago it was! And May came to the young. The old was ripening for the sky,     The young was twenty-four. The Franklin`s daughter passed him by,     Reading a painted missal-book, Beside the chapel door. With brown cassock and sandalled feet,     And red Spring wine for blood; The very next noon he chanced to meet     The Franklin`s daughter, in a green May twilight, Walking through the wood. Pax vobiscum to a maid     The crosiered ferns among! But hers was only the Saxon,     And his the Norman tongue; And the Latin taught by the old friar     Made music for the young. And never a better deed was done     By Mother Church below Than when she made old England one,     Hundreds of years ago it was! Hundreds of years ago. Rich was the painted page they read     Before that sunset died; Nut-brown hood by golden head,     Murmuring Rosa Mystica, While nesting thrushes cried. A Saxon maid with flaxen hair,     And eyes of Sussex grey; A young monk out of Normandy:     "May is our Lady`s month," he said, "And O, my love, my May!" Then over the fallen missal-book     The missel-thrushes sung Till Domus Aurea rose the moon     And bells for vespers rung. It was gold and blue for the old friar,     But hawthorn for the young. For gown of green and brown hood,     Before that curfew tolled, Had flown for ever through the wood     Hundreds of years ago it was! But twenty summers old. And empty stood his chapel stall,     Empty his thin grey cell, Empty her seat in the Franklin`s hall;     And there were swords that searched for them Before the matin bell. And, crowders tell, a sword that night     Wrought them an evil turn, And that the may was not more white     Than those white bones the robin found Among the roots of fern. But others tell of stranger things     Half-heard on Whitsun eves, Of sweet and ghostly whisperings     Though hundreds of years ago it was Among the ghostly leaves:         Sero te amavi             Grey eyes of sun-lit dew!         Tam antiqua, tam nova             Augustine heard it, too.         Late have I loved that May, Lady,             So ancient, and so new! And no man knows where they were flown,     For the wind takes the may: But white and fresh the may was blown     Though hundreds of years ago it was As this that blooms to-day. And the leaves break out on the wild briar,     And bells must still be rung; But sorrow comes to the old friar,     For he remembers a May, a May, When his old heart was young.
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