Here we descend at drooping dusk the side Of the stony down beneath the planted ring Of beeches where you showed with pastoral pride The folded lambs in spring; Here pull at eve the self-same bell that hastened Your rough-shod feet behind the hollow door-- Yet never see you stand, the chain unfastened, Your lantern on the floor. Others will spread the board now you are gone Here where you smiled and gave your guests to eat, Learning your menial kingliness from One Who washed His servant’s feet; Along the slumbering corridors betimes Others will knock and other footsteps pass Down the wet lane e’er the thin shivering chimes Toll for the early mass. Yet in the chapel’s self no sorrows sing In the strange priest’s voice, nor any dolour grips The heart because it is not you who bring Your Master to its lips. Here let us leave the things you would not have-- Vain grief and sorrow useless to be shown-- “God’s gift and the Community’s I gave And nothing of my own,” You would have said, self-deemed of no more worth That then green hands that guard a poppy’s grace-- Blows the eternal flower and back to earth Tumbles the withered case. Nay, but Our Lord hath made renouncement vain, Himself into those humble hands let fall, Guerdon of willing poverty and pain, The greatest gift of all; To you and all who in that life austere Mid fields remote your harsher labours ply Singing His praise, girt round from year to year With sheep-bells and the sky-- This, that to you is larger audience given Where prayer and praise with sighing pinions shod Piercing the starry ante-rooms of Heaven Sway the designs of God: And now yourself, standing where late hath stood The echo of your voice, are prayer and praise-- O sweet reward and unsurpassing good For that small gift of days. Yourself, who now have heard such summoning And seen such burning clarities alight As broke the vigilant shepherds’ drowsy ring On the predestined night, Who made such haste as theirs who rose and trod To Bethlehem the dew-encumbered grass, Trustful to see the showing forth of God And the Word come to pass; With how much more than home-spun Israelites’ Poor hungry glimpse of Godhead are you blest Whom Mary shows for more than mortal nights The Jewel on her breast. Yet, as one kneeling churl might chance to think Of the wan herd behind their wattled bars, Moving unshepherded with bells that clink And stir beneath the stars, And, for the thought’s space wishing he were back, Pray, to that Sum of Sweetness for his sheep-- “Take them, O Thou that dost supply our lack, Into Thy hands to keep.”