Edward Dowden (1843–1913)

IN the Dean’s porch a nest of clay

With five small tenants may be seen;

Five solemn faces, each as wise

As if its owner were a Dean;

Five downy fledglings in a row,

Pack’d close, as in the antique pew

The school-girls are whose foreheads clear

At the Venite shine on you.

Day after day the swallows sit

With scarce a stir, with scarce a sound,

But dreaming and digesting much

They grow thus wise and soft and round:

They watch the Canons come to dine,

And hear, the mullion-bars across,

Over the fragrant fruit and wine

Deep talk of rood-screen and reredos.

Her hands with field-flowers drench’d, a child

Leaps past in wind-blown dress and hair,

The swallows turn their heads askew—

Five judges deem that she is fair.

Prelusive touches sound within,

Straightway they recognize the sign,

And, blandly nodding, they approve

The minuet of Rubinstein.

They mark the cousins’ schoolboy talk,

(Male birds flown wide from minster bell),

And blink at each broad term of art,

Binomial or bicycle.

Ah! downy young ones, soft and warm,

Doth such a stillness mask from sight

Such swiftness? can such peace conceal

Passion and ecstasy of flight?

Yet somewhere ’mid your Eastern suns,

Under a white Greek architrave

At morn, or when the shaft of fire

Lies large upon the Indian wave,

A sense of something dear gone by

Will stir, strange longings thrill the heart

For a small world embower’d and close,

Of which ye sometime were a part.

The dew-drench’d flowers, the child’s glad eyes

Your joy unhuman shall control,

And in your wings a light and wind

Shall move from the Maestro’s soul.