A Winter Minster

And all the grottoed aisles along,
Where servitors rejoice,
The chorused echoes run-

Oremus nos.

The inspiration of the breeze
Gives every reed a voice
From tenebrae and silences;
Over the valleys borne,
Come organ harmonies;
And when the low winds call,
The pines with miserere mourn
A requiem musical,
Softer than moonbeams fall
Across the starry oriels of night,
Flooding the azure round
With hushed delight
And sanctity of sound.

Michael Earls

Michael Earls, born on November 2, 1875, and died on November 7, 1937, was an American poet, playwright, and Jesuit priest. He was a prolific writer, contributing to numerous American periodicals and magazines. His works often explored themes of faith, nature, and human experience. He was known for his engaging style and profound insights into spirituality and everyday life. Earls had a significant influence on Catholic literature in America during the early 20th century.

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English

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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...

Michael Earls

Alleluia Height

And the resounding harpers of the vine,
Lone winter holds upon the Height
Her court in full renown.
Obedient her courtiers go,
Their gonfalons aloft and bright,
And scatter pearls of snow;
Her sturdy knighthood wear for crown
Prismatic sheen in young delight,
And wave the cedar oriflamme on high;
While windward heralds cry,
Across the battlements of earth
To parapets along the sky,
The lauds of character's full worth.

The winter passes and the days come in
Vibrant with spring.
And men find welcome at the Easter tomb,
Reward they win,
Who make their hearts with courage sing
Through Lenten opportunity of gloom:
(Not as the Pharisees,
With faces lacrimose,
Who wear pretence of ashen woes,
And murmur like the tuneless bees,

Michael Earls

Alleluia Height

Yea, constant through the changeful year,
This queenly Height commands our praise.
To stand in meek unflinching hardihood
When fortune blows its storm of fright,
And work to full effect that good
Resolved in open days of clearer sight-
O, this is worth!
That daily sees the soul
To braver liberties give birth,
That heeds not time's annoy,
And hears surrounding voices roll
Perennial circumstance of joy.
Then come not only when the springtime blows
The old familiar strangeness of its breath
Across the long-lain snows,
And chants her resurrected songs
About the tombs of death;
Nor yet when summer glows
In roseate throngs
And works her plenitude of deeds
By tangled dells and waving meads,
Come here in beauty's pilgrimage:
Nor when the ...

Michael Earls

Alleluia Height

Obedience to the seasons' marshall-rod,
That is a law of God,
Here beauty passes with her gorgeous train,
On paths that range from bud to grain.
O, here the searching eyes
In traffic for the soul's good gain
Earn wealth of rare delight.
Far pathways of surprise,
In color's frumenty bedight,
Lead off from avenues of day
Through miles of pageantries:
And from the starry chancels of the night
And the inscrutable farther skies,
Beyond where trackless comets stray,
Outspreads a world in thought's array.
And lo! the heart's true voices sing
From the exulting reverent breast,
And lips proclaim, with adoration blessed,
Glad Alleluias to the King.

Prompt is our praise unto a jewelled queen
In all her courtly splendor set,
(Fair as those f...

Michael Earls

At Vespers.

High up in the organ-story
A girl stands slim and fair;
And touched with the casement's glory
Gleams out her radiant hair.

The young priest kneels at the altar,
Then lifts the Host above;
And the psalm intoned from the psalter
Is pure with patient love.

A sweet bell chimes; and a censer
Swings gleaming in the gloom;
The candles glimmer and denser
Rolls up the pale perfume.

Then high in the organ choir
A voice of crystal soars,
Of patience and soul's desire,
That suffers and adores.

And out of the altar's dimness
An answering voice doth swell,
Of passion that cries from the grimness
And anguish of its own hell.

High up in the organ-story
One kneels with a girlish grace;
And, touched with the vesper glo...

Madison Julius Cawein

My Cathedral

Like two cathedral towers these stately pines
    Uplift their fretted summits tipped with cones;
    The arch beneath them is not built with stones,
    Not Art but Nature traced these lovely lines,
And carved this graceful arabesque of vines;
    No organ but the wind here sighs and moans,
    No sepulchre conceals a martyr's bones.
    No marble bishop on his tomb reclines.
Enter! the pavement, carpeted with leaves,
    Gives back a softened echo to thy tread!
    Listen! the choir is singing; all the birds,
In leafy galleries beneath the eaves,
    Are singing! listen, ere the sound be fled,
    And learn there may be worship with out words.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow