Copying Architecture In An Old Minster (Wimborne)

How smartly the quarters of the hour march by      That the jack-o'-clock never forgets;      Ding-dong; and before I have traced a cusp's eye,     Or got the true twist of the ogee over,      A double ding-dong ricochetts.      Just so did he clang here before I came,      And so will he clang when I'm gone      Through the Minster's cavernous hollows - the same     Tale of hours never more to be will he deliver      To the speechless midnight and dawn!      I grow to conceive it a call to ghosts,      Whose mould lies below and around.      Yes; the next "Come, come," draws them out from their posts,     And they gather, and one shade appears, and another,      As the eve-damps creep from the ground.      See - a Courtenay stands by his quatre-foiled tomb,      And a Duke and his Duchess near;      And one Sir Edmund in columned gloom,     And a Saxon king by the presbytery chamber;      And shapes unknown in the rear.      Maybe they have met for a parle on some plan      To better ail-stricken mankind;      I catch their cheepings, though thinner than     The overhead creak of a passager's pinion      When leaving land behind.      Or perhaps they speak to the yet unborn,      And caution them not to come      To a world so ancient and trouble-torn,     Of foiled intents, vain lovingkindness,      And ardours chilled and numb.      They waste to fog as I stir and stand,      And move from the arched recess,      And pick up the drawing that slipped from my hand,     And feel for the pencil I dropped in the cranny      In a moment's forgetfulness.