Apostrophe to an Old Psalm Tune

I MET you first—ah, when did I first meet you?When I was full of wonder, and innocent,Standing meek-eyed with those of choric bent,While dimming day grew dimmerIn the pulpit-glimmer.

Much riper in years I met you—in a templeWhere summer sunset streamed upon our shapes,And you spread over me like a gauze that drapes,And flapped from floor to rafters,Sweet as angels’ laughters.

But you had been stripped of some of your old vestureBy Monk, or another. Now you wore no frill,And at first you startled me. But I knew you still,Though I missed the minim’s waver,And the dotted quaver.

I grew accustomed to you thus. And you hailed meThrough one who evoked you often. Then at lastYour raiser was borne off, and I mourned you had passedFrom my life with your late outsetter;Till I said, “’Tis better!”

But you waylaid me. I rose and went as a ghost goes,And said, eyes-full “I’ll never hear it again!It is overmuch for scathed and memoried menWhen sitting among strange peopleUnder their steeple.”

Now, a new stirrer of tones calls you up before meAnd wakes your speech, as she of Endor did(When sought by Saul who, in disguises hid,Fell down on the earth to hear it)Samuel’s spirit.

So, your quired oracles beat till they make me trembleAs I discern your mien in the old attire,Here in these turmoiled years of belligerent fireLiving still on—and onward, maybe,Till Doom’s great day be!