| |
| IN his abbey cell Saint Cuthbert | |
| Sate burdened and care-dismayed: | |
| For the wild Northumbrian people, | |
| For whom he had wrought and prayed, | |
| Still clung to their warlike pastime, | 5 |
| Their plunder and border raid; | |
| |
| Still scouted all peaceful tillage, | |
| And queried with scowling brow, | |
| “Shall we who have won our victual | |
| By the stout, strong hand till now, | 10 |
| Forswearing the free, bold foray, | |
| Crawl after the servile plough?” | |
| |
| “Through year and through year I have taught them | |
| By the word of my mouth,” he said, | |
| “And still, in their untamed rudeness, | 15 |
| They trust to the wilds for bread; | |
| But now will I teach henceforward | |
| By the toil of my hands instead. | |
| |
| “In their sight I will set the lesson; | |
| And, gazing across the tarn, | 20 |
| They shall see on its nether border | |
| Garth, byre, and hurdled barn, | |
| And the brave, fair field of barley | |
| That shall whiten at Lindisfarne.” | |
| |
| Therewith from his Melrose cloister | 25 |
| Saint Cuthbert went his way: | |
| He felled the hurst, and the meadow | |
| Bare him rich swaths of hay, | |
| And forth and aback in the furrow | |
| He wearied the longsome day. | 30 |
| |
| And it came to pass when the autumn | |
| The ground with its sere leaves strawed, | |
| And the purple was over the moorlands, | |
| And the rust on the sunburnt sod, | |
| That, ripe for the reaper, the barley | 35 |
| Silvered the acres broad. | |
| |
| Then certain among the people, | |
| Fierce folk who had laughed to scorn | |
| The cark of the patient toiler, | |
| While riot and hunt and horn | 40 |
| Were wiling them in the greenwood, | |
| Cried: “Never Northumbrian born | |
| |
| “Shall make of his sword a sickle, | |
| Or help to winnow the heap: | |
| The hand that hath sowed may garner | 45 |
| The grain as he list,—or sleep, | |
| And pray the hard Lord he serveth, | |
| That his angels may come and reap.” | |
| |
| Right sadly Saint Cuthbert listened; | |
| And, bowing his silvered head, | 50 |
| He sought for a Christ-like patience | |
| As he lay on his rush-strewn bed, | |
| And strength for the morrow’s scything, | |
| Till his fears and his sadness fled. | |
| |
| Then he dreamed that he saw descending | 55 |
| On the marge of the moorland tarn | |
| A circle of shining reapers, | |
| Who heaped in the low-eaved barn | |
| The sheaves that their gleaming sickles | |
| Had levelled at Lindisfarne. | 60 |
| |
| In the cool of the crispy morning, | |
| Ere the lark had quitted her nest | |
| In the beaded grass, the sleeper | |
| Arose from his place of rest; | |
| “For,” he sighed, “I must toil till the gloaming | 65 |
| Is graying the golden west.” | |
| |
| He turned to look at his corn-land; | |
| Did he dream? Did he see aright? | |
| Close cut was the field of barley, | |
| And the stubble stood thick in sight: | 70 |
| For the reapers with shining sickles | |
| Had harvested all the night! | |
| |
