Explore "The Golden Legend" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
The Convent cellar. FRIAR CLAUS comes in with a light and a basket of empty flagons.
FRIAR CLAUS. / I always enter this sacred place / With a thoughtful, solemn, and reverent pace, / Pausing long enough on each stair / To breathe an ejaculatory prayer, / And a benediction on the vines / That produce these various sorts of wines! / For my part, I am well content / That we have got through with the tedious Lent! / Fasting is all very well for those / Who have to contend with invisible foes; / But I am quite sure it does not agree / With a quiet, peaceable man like me, / Who am not of that nervous and meagre kind, / That are always distressed in body and mind! / And at times it really does me good / To come down among this brotherhood, / Dwelling forever underground, / Silent, contemplative, round and sound; / Each one old, and brown with mould, / But filled to the lips with the ardor of youth, / With the latent power and love of truth, / And with virtues fervent and manifold.