THE ABBESS
Pink oleander lamps the brook-bed trails,
And orange-trees hang fruitage o’er the grain,
And there are hedges, green with fitful rain,
And cyclamen in white the hillside veils.
While through the villages, ’neath Mistra’s height,
The children run to give a rose and stare
At strangers riding where grey olives flare
Mistily in the long hills’ summer light.
Rose-pinnacled, a Franco-Turkish wall
Trailing with ivy, rears its crumbling mass,
Pantassa Church’s apse and mouldered hall
Look down upon the plain of Eurotas.
Byzantine tower’s clear octagonal,
Jewel-like and fretted, circles on the sky;
A pavèd walk leads to the nunnery,
Past moss-grown arch and ruined capital.
And here, an Abbess, old, yet maiden-faced,
Sits in a frigid pomp, in solemn pride:
Stately, aloof, the church’s pallid bride,
Greets us with countenance austere and chaste.
The Abbess leads the way, with rigid calm,
Detached, haughty, imperious; her eyes
Pompously ignorant, religious-wise,
Cool as the blank intoning of a psalm.
There are great piles of rose-leaves in the room,
Convent-brewed wines and bright bags, needle-wrought;
There is an ancient fountain in the court,
And guttering candles in the Church’s gloom.
“The times have changed,” we said; “women no more
Hide them from life. We mingle and we work.
Christ only asks that not a soul shall shirk
Or flinch from bearing burdens that He bore.”
The Abbess smiled. “Silence,” she said; “we learn,
On this hilltop we women watch the East,
The morning sun o’er Sparta is our priest,
The mountain stars like midnight tapers burn.”
We looked at her; her eyes were crystal clear,
Passionless, pure and cold as moonlit snow.
Something she felt that we could never know;
Our vision to her eyes could not appear.
We left her in the shadowed court to brood,
Where Frankish frescoes peer through shadows dim,
And cloistered nuns in tuneless, wailing hymn,
Chant Faith untried in mountain solitude.