Explore "At the Gate" by Edith Nesbit on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
THE monastery towers, as pure and fair / As virgin vows, reached up white hands to Heaven; / The walls, to guard the hidden heart of prayer, / Were strong as sin, and white as sin forgiven; / And there came holy men, by world's woe driven; / And all about the gold-green meadows lay / Flower-decked, like children dear that keep May-holiday.
"Here," said the Abbot, "let us spend our days, / Days sweetened by the lilies of pure prayer, / Hung with white garlands of the rose of praise; / And, lest the World should enter with her snare -- / Enter and laugh and take us unaware / With her red rose, her purple and her gold -- / Choose we a stranger's hand the porter's keys to hold."