No one, except the journalists of
yesterday, would spend upon them those tedious words, "quaint," or "old
world." No such weary adjectives are spoken here, unless it be by the
excursionists.
With large aprons tied over their brown habits, the Lay Brothers work
upon their land, planting parsnips in rows, or tending a prosperous bee-
farm. A young friar, who sang the High Mass yesterday, is gaily hanging
the washed linen in the sun. A printing press, and a machine which
slices turnips, are at work in an outhouse, and the yard thereby is
guarded by a St Bernard, whose single evil deed was that under one of the
obscure impulses of a dog's heart--atoned for by long and self-conscious
remorse--he bit the poet; and tried, says one of the friars, to make
doggerel of him. The poet, too, lives at the monastery gates, and on
monastery ground, in a seclusion which the tidings of the sequence of his
editions hardly reaches. There is no disturbing renown to be got among
the cabins of the Flintshire hills. Homeward, over the verge, from other
valleys, his light figure flits at nightfall, like a moth.
Pages:
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43