Poems (Tynan)/The Hiding Away of Blessed Angus

by Katharine Tynan

THE HIDING AWAY OF BLESSED ANGUS

IRELAND, A.D. 770

Because his fame was noised abroad
 And blown about from sea to sea,
Angus, God's singer, dear to God,
 Ate ashes in humility,
Deeming man's praise as nothing more
Than chaff upon a winnowing floor.

But since such dust might enter in
 And choke the soul, he fled away
One morning when the birds begin,
 About the time of gold and gray;
And came barefoot, with tattered gown,
To Tallaght, nigh to Dublin town.

At Tallaght the great Friary stood,
 A hive of busy saintly bees.
Their Abbot, Melruan, wise and good,
 Angus besought on bended knees,
Some task, however hard and rough,
Nor drive the starving beggar off.

His face was grimed with dust and sweat,
 His lips were at the threshold stone;
His eyes with heavy tears were wet,
 He beat his breast with many a moan:
Surely, my Lord the Abbot thought,
Some sinner in whom grace hath wrought.

He sent him out to tend the kiln,
 To feed the mill and grind the corn.
Like a great clown of little skill
 He bore large burdens, night and morn.
He cleaned the cattle's house and laid
The food before each grateful head.

Yet still he sang, lest God should miss
 One voice that praised His Name for long
Perhaps, or for the singing-bliss.
 He never sang so good a song
As that which brought the kine to hear,
And the shy hare and timid deer.

(The brother and friend of beast and bird.
 Once, when an oak-bough fell on him
And crushed him, and his cries unheard,
 He swooned, and life went low and dim,
The birds shrieked with such clamour and rout
They brought the human helpers out.)

O, but the fields stretched green and glad,
 With stars of gold and stars of white,
No lovelier stars the heaven had,
 The clear pellucid heaven at night:
The low hills tender as the dove
Girdled the bright fields round with love.

The hills were blue, the hills were gray,
 The hills were rosier than the morn;
Thin veils of gold and silver lay
 On emerald fields and fields of corn:
All purple on a sky of glass
A lovelier line there never was.

Down from the Vale of Thrushes came
 That flight of carolling birds, which lit
Where Angus was, and named his name,
 With a clear chorus after it:
And perching on his gown to sing,
They clad him like a feathered thing.

Sweet, sweet! the garrulous blackbird trilled,
 Have you not heard, have you not heard
How Anigus, more than mortal skilled,
 And more than any singing bird,
Toils in the trenches like a churl?
The Convent dunghill hath its pearl.

He sang it at the Abbot's ear,
 Who, by his casement in the light
Painted a missal fair and clear
 With apple-blooms of rose and white.
"Seldom," he murmured, "have I heard
So noisy and so bold a bird."

At last the secret in this wise
 Came to the light. A little lad,
A schoolboy with meek, innocent eyes,
 Like those the patient oxen had,
Long strove his difficult task to learn,
And failed; and he was stung with scorn.

One morn, in very evil case,
 Driven from school, he sought the byre,
And flung himself upon his face,
 Sobbing with tearless eyes on fire.
Wishing that he were dead, alas!
Because his world so bitter was.

And while he sobbed, one drew aside
 The straw, and came so stealthily,
The Convent churl, most pitiful-eyed
 For a child's trouble sad to see;
He knelt and whispered words of cheer
And hope and comfort in his ear;

And smoothed with his fingers rough
 The tangled curls; and touching there,
He seemed to brush the trouble off,
 The slowness that was hard to bear;
He smoothed some tangle of the brain,
And made the difficult lesson plain.

The child climbed out of his kind arms,
 And hied him to the school-house door.
And free from shame and all alarms
 He said his lesson o'er and o'er.
Henceforth, his sluggish brains would be
As clear as crystal verily.

And when his wonderful tale was told,
 They knew, those foolish friars, at last,
Their Convent held the treasure of gold
 Angus, whom for a twelvemonth past
Men sought, then deemed the search in vain,
Since God His gift had taken again.

In a procession they went out;
 The mitred Abbot at their head;
And all the folk, with song and shout,
 Went following down the way they led:
And through the haggard and the barn,
And past the yellowing field of corn.

They found the saint of songs and books
 Feeding his dear kine with sweet grass,
Who turned on him their loving looks;
 And with his brother birds he was.
Seeing, he let the green swathes fall,
And turned his sad face to the wall.

The Abbot knelt and kissed his feet,
 They brought him fine robes to put on,
And fair and costly things to eat,
 A crozier like the sun that shone.
But Angus wept, and sore afeard,
Cast ashes on his hair and beard.