A Winter Minster

(For Fr. C. L. O'Donnell)     The interlacing trees     Arise in Gothic traceries,     As if a vast cathedral deep and dim;     And through the solemn atmosphere     The low winds hymn     Such thoughts as solitude will hear.     To lead your way across     Gray carpet aisles of moss     Unto the chantry stalls,     The sumach candelabra are alight;     Along the cloister walls,     Like chorister and acolyte,     The shrubs are vested white;     The dutiful monastic oak     In his gray-friar cloak     Keeps penitential ways     And solemn orisons of praise;     For beads upon the cincture-vine     Red berries warm with color shine,     And to their constant rosary     The bedesmen firs incline;     And fair as frescoes be     Among the shrines of Italy,     These lights and shadows are,     Impalpable in gray and green     Upon the hills afar     And the gold westering sun between.     The music! Hark!     Oh, an it be no rapturous lark,     Yet has the lesser chant     The blessedness of song.     The snowbird mendicant     Intones the antiphon-     Et laboremus nos;