SAN MIGUEL DE LA TUMBA is a convent vast and wide; | |
| The sea encircles it around, and groans on every side: | |
| It is a wild and dangerous place, and many woes betide | |
| The monks who in that burial-place in penitence abide. | |
| |
| Within those dark monastic walls, amid the ocean flood, | 5 |
| Of pious, fasting monks there dwelt a holy brotherhood; | |
| To the Madonna’s glory there an altar high was placed, | |
| And a rich and costly image the sacred altar graced. | |
| |
| Exalted high upon a throne, the Virgin Mother smiled, | |
| And, as the custom is, she held within her arms the Child; | 10 |
| The kings and wise men of the East were kneeling by her side; | |
| Attended was she like a queen whom God had sanctified. * * * * * | |
| Descending low before her face a screen of feathers hung,— | |
| A moscader, or fan for flies, ’t is called in vulgar tongue; | |
| From the feathers of the peacock’s wing ’t was fashioned bright and fair, | 15 |
| And glistened like the heaven above when all its stars are there. | |
| |
| It chanced that, for the people’s sins, fell the lightning’s blasting stroke: | |
| Forth from all four the sacred walls the flames consuming broke; | |
| The sacred robes were all consumed, missal and holy book; | |
| And hardly with their lives the monks their crumbling walls forsook. * * * * * | 20 |
| But though the desolating flame raged fearfully and wild, | |
| It did not reach the Virgin Queen, it did not reach the Child; | |
| It did not reach the feathery screen before her face that shone, | |
| Nor injure in a farthing’s worth the image or the throne. | |
| |
| The image it did not consume, it did not burn the screen; | 25 |
| Even in the value of a hair they were not hurt, I ween; | |
| Not even the smoke did reach them, nor injure more the shrine | |
| Than the bishop hight Don Tello has been hurt by hand of mine. * * * * * | |
| |
