Poem: The Lost Pyx: A Mediaeval Legend

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Some say the spot is banned; that the pillar Cross-and-Hand

Attests to a deed of hell;

But of else than of bale is the mystic tale

That ancient Vale-folk tell.

Ere Cernel's Abbey ceased hereabout there dwelt a priest,

(In later life sub-prior

Of the brotherhood there, whose bones are now bare

In the field that was Cernel choir).

One night in his cell at the foot of yon dell

The priest heard a frequent cry:

"Go, father, in haste to the cot on the waste,

And shrive a man waiting to die."

Said the priest in a shout to the caller without,

"The night howls, the tree-trunks bow;

One may barely by day track so rugged a way,

And can I then do so now?"

No further word from the dark was heard,

And the priest moved never a limb;

And he slept and dreamed; till a Visage seemed

To frown from Heaven at him.

In a sweat he arose; and the storm shrieked shrill,

And smote as in savage joy;

While High-Stoy trees twanged to Bubb-Down Hill,

And Bubb-Down to High-Stoy.

There seemed not a holy thing in hail,

Nor shape of light or love,

From the Abbey north of Blackmore Vale

To the Abbey south thereof.

Yet he plodded thence through the dark immense,

And with many a stumbling stride

Through copse and briar climbed nigh and nigher

To the cot and the sick man's side.

When he would have unslung the Vessels uphung

To his arm in the steep ascent,

He made loud moan: the Pyx was gone

Of the Blessed Sacrament.

Then in dolorous dread he beat his head:

"No earthly prize or pelf

Is the thing I've lost in tempest tossed,

But the Body of Christ Himself!"

He thought of the Visage his dream revealed,

And turned towards whence he came,

Hands groping the ground along foot-track and field,

And head in a heat of shame.

Till here on the hill, betwixt vill and vill,

He noted a clear straight ray

Stretching down from the sky to a spot hard by,

Which shone with the light of day.

And gathered around the illumined ground

Were common beasts and rare,

All kneeling at gaze, and in pause profound

Attent on an object there.

'Twas the Pyx, unharmed 'mid the circling rows

Of Blackmore's hairy throng,

Whereof were oxen, sheep, and does,

And hares from the brakes among;

And badgers grey, and conies keen,

And squirrels of the tree,

And many a member seldom seen

Of Nature's family.

The ireful winds that scoured and swept

Through coppice, clump, and dell,

Within that holy circle slept

Calm as in hermit's cell.

Then the priest bent likewise to the sod

And thanked the Lord of Love,

And Blessed Mary, Mother of God,

And all the saints above.

And turning straight with his priceless freight,

He reached the dying one,

Whose passing sprite had been stayed for the rite

Without which bliss hath none.

And when by grace the priest won place,

And served the Abbey well,

He reared this stone to mark where shone

That midnight miracle.

Thomas Hardy (1840-1928)

Many thanks to Edward Kendall for sending this poem.