No splendour falls on these brick walls; The driving wind to water calls, And rivet-hard the cold rain falls. No bards sing, no young lovers woo, For songs and sighs die sullen through The tunnels of this howling brew. In streaming fields the lily cowers, No apples hang in leafy bowers And storms invade the sleepy hours. The seasons ever onward steal; No human hands can stay that wheel Though mortals to the gods appeal.

Our walls are plain; unstoried still The snowless summit of our hill, And autumn's but a dead-leaved chill. But see the filaments of light That breach our doors and blinds by night, Refracted in the raindrops' flight: They glide upon the windswept gloom, And as they lend the night their bloom, They twine upon an unseen loom That binds a thread from every heart Within these walls, where all impart The love from which the light departs.