The Middle Ages sleep in alabaster

A delicate fine sleep. They never knew

The irreparable hell of that disaster,

That broke with hammers Heaven's fragile blue.

Yea, crowned and robed and silent he abides,

Last of the Romans and that ivory calm,

Beneath whose wings august the minster-sides

Trembled like virgins to the perfect Psalm.

Yea, it is gone with him, yea, it returns not;

The gilt proud sanctuaries are dust, the high

Steam of the violet fragrant frankincense burns not:

All gone; it was too beautiful to die.

It was too beautiful to live; the world

Ne'er rotted it with her slow-creeping hells:

Men shall not see the Vision crowned and pearled,

When Jerusalem blossomed in the noontide bells!

Amid the blue smoke of gem-glassed chapels

You shall find Me, the white five-wounded Flower,

The Rose of Sarras. Yea, the moths have eaten,

And fretted the gold cloths of the duke of York,

And lost is the scarlet cloak of the cardinal Beaufort;

Tapers are quencht and rods of silver broken,

Where once king Richard dined beneath the leopards:

But think you that any beautifulness is wasted,

Wherewith Mine angels have blessed the blue-eyed English,

Twining into stone an obscure dream of Heaven,

A crown of flinty spines about the Rose,

A slim flame blessing the coronal of thorns?

And York is for ever the White Rose of Mary,

And Lancaster is dipt in the Precious Blood,

Though the high shrine that was built by the king of the Romans

Be down at Hayles, and the abbey of saint Mary

Be shattered now in three-towered Eboracum.