THE CATHEDRAL CLOSE.
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Once more I came to Sarum Close,With joy half memory, half desire,And breathed the sunny wind that roseAnd blew the shadows o’er the Spire,And toss’d the lilac’s scented plumes,And sway’d the chestnut’s thousand cones,And fill’d my nostrils with perfumes,And shaped the clouds in waifs and zones,And wafted down the serious strainOf Sarum bells, when, true to time,I reach’d the Dean’s, with heart and brainThat trembled to the trembling chime. 2 ’Twas half my home, six years ago.The six years had not alter’d it:Red-brick and ashlar, long and low,With dormers and with oriels lit.Geranium, lychnis, rose array’dThe windows, all wide open thrown;And some one in the Study play’dThe Wedding-March of Mendelssohn.And there it was I last took leave:’Twas Christmas: I remember’d nowThe cruel girls, who feign’d to grieve,Took down the evergreens; and howThe holly into blazes wokeThe fire, lighting the large, low room,A dim, rich lustre of old oakAnd crimson velvet’s glowing gloom.No change had touch’d Dean Churchill: kind,By widowhood more than winters bent,And settled in a cheerful mind,As still forecasting heaven’s content.Well might his thoughts be fix’d on high,Now she was there! Within her faceHumility and dignityWere met in a most sweet embrace.She seem’d expressly sent belowTo teach our erring minds to seeThe rhythmic change of time’s swift flowAs part of still eternity.Her life, all honour, observed, with aweWhich cross experience could not mar,The fiction of the Christian lawThat all men honourable are;And so her smile at once conferr’dHigh flattery and benign reproof;And I, a rude boy, strangely stirr’d,Grew courtly in my own behoof.The years, so far from doing her wrong,Anointed her with gracious balm,And made her brows more and more youngWith wreaths of amaranth and palm. 4 Was this her eldest, Honor; prude,Who would not let me pull the swing;Who, kiss’d at Christmas, call’d me rude,And, sobbing low, refused to sing?How changed! In shape no slender Grace,But Venus; milder than the dove;Her mother’s air; her Norman face;Her large sweet eyes, clear lakes of love.Mary I knew. In former timeAiling and pale, she thought that blissWas only for a better clime,And, heavenly overmuch, scorn’d this.I, rash with theories of the right,Which stretch’d the tether of my Creed,But did not break it, held delightHalf discipline. We disagreed.She told the Dean I wanted grace.Now she was kindest of the three,And soft wild roses deck’d her face.And, what, was this my Mildred, sheTo herself and all a sweet surprise?My Pet, who romp’d and roll’d a hoop?I wonder’d where those daisy eyesHad found their touching curve and droop. 5 Unmannerly times! But now we satStranger than strangers; till I caughtAnd answer’d Mildred’s smile; and thatSpread to the rest, and freedom brought.The Dean talk’d little, looking on,Of three such daughters justly vain.What letters they had had from Bonn,Said Mildred, and what plums from Spain!By Honor I was kindly task’dTo excuse my never coming downFrom Cambridge; Mary smiled and ask’dWere Kant and Goethe yet outgrown?And, pleased, we talk’d the old days o’er;And, parting, I for pleasure sigh’d.To be there as a friend, (since more),Seem’d then, seems still, excuse for pride;For something that abode enduedWith temple-like repose, an airOf life’s kind purposes pursuedWith order’d freedom sweet and fair.A tent pitch’d in a world not rightIt seem’d, whose inmates, every one,On tranquil faces bore the lightOf duties beautifully done,And humbly, though they had few peers,Kept their own laws, which seem’d to beThe fair sum of six thousand years’Traditions of civility.
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