Thomas Hardy — 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.