'
"I feel the abbot's words are just,
And that all thanks renounce I must.
"Can a man welcome praise and pelf
For hatching art that hatched itself? . . .
"So, I shall own the deft design
Is Heaven's outshaping, and not mine."
"What!" said she. "Praise your works ensure
To throw away, and quite obscure
"Your beaming and beneficent star?
Better you leave things as they are!
"Why, think awhile. Had not your zest
In your loved craft curtailed your rest -
"Had you not gone there ere the day
The sun had melted all away!"
- But, though his good wife argued so,
The mason let the people know
That not unaided sprang the thought
Whereby the glorious fane was wrought,
But that by frost when dawn was dim
The method was disclosed to him.
"Yet," said the townspeople thereat,
"'Tis your own doing, even with that!"
But he--chafed, childlike, in extremes -
The temperament of men of dreams -
Aloofly scrupled to admit
That he did aught but borrow it,
And diffidently made request
That with the abbot all should rest.
- As none could doubt the abbot's word,
Or question what the church averred,
The mason was at length believed
Of no more count than he conceived,
And soon began to lose the fame
That late had gathered round his name . . .
- Time passed, and like a living thing
The pile went on embodying,
And workmen died, and young ones grew,
And the old mason sank from view
And Abbots Wygmore and Staunton went
And Horton sped the embellishment.
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