“What fearful visions have inspired These gaingivings?” his wife inquired;
“As if your tools were in your hand You have hammered, fitted, muttered, planned;
“You have thumped as you were working hard: I might have found me bruised and scarred.
“What then’s amiss. What eating care Looms nigh, whereof I am unaware?”
He answered not, but churchward went, Viewing his draughts with discontent;
And fumbled there the livelong day Till, hollow-eyed, he came away.
—’Twas said, “The master-mason’s ill!” And all the abbey works stood still.
Quoth Abbot Wygmore: “Why, O why Distress yourself? You’ll surely die!”
The mason answered, trouble-torn, “This long-vogued style is quite outworn!
“The upper archmould nohow serves To meet the lower tracery curves:
“The ogees bend too far away To give the flexures interplay.
“This it is causes my distress . . . So it will ever be unless
“New forms be found to supersede The circle when occasions need.
“To carry it out I have tried and toiled, And now perforce must own me foiled!
“Jeerers will say: ‘Here was a man Who could not end what he began!’”
—So passed that day, the next, the next; The abbot scanned the task, perplexed;
The townsmen mustered all their wit To fathom how to compass it,
But no raw artistries availed Where practice in the craft had failed . . .
—One night he tossed, all open-eyed, And early left his helpmeet’s side.
Scattering the rushes of the floor He wandered from the chamber door
And sought the sizing pile, whereon Struck dimly a cadaverous dawn
Through freezing rain, that drenched the board Of diagram-lines he last had scored—
Chalked phantasies in vain begot To knife the architectural knot—
In front of which he dully stood, Regarding them in hopeless mood.
He closelier looked; then looked again: The chalk-scratched draught-board faced the rain,
Whose icicled drops deformed the lines Innumerous of his lame designs,
So that they streamed in small white threads From the upper segments to the heads
Of arcs below, uniting them Each by a stalactitic stem.
—At once, with eyes that struck out sparks, He adds accessory cusping-marks,
Then laughs aloud. The thing was done So long assayed from sun to sun . . .
—Now in his joy he grew aware Of one behind him standing there,