Uploaded on November 3, 2011
… And the Yule-log cracked in the chimney,
and the Abbot bowed his head,
and the flamelets flapped and flickered,
but the Abbot was stark and dead.
Yet still in his pallid fingers
he clutched the golden bowl,
in which, like a pearl dissolving,
had sunk and dissolved his soul.
But not for this their revels
the jovial monks forbore,
for they cried, “Fill high the goblet!”
We must drink to one saint more!”
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
The Giant Book of Poetry
edited by William H. Roetzheim
11.3.2023: Every time I read this, I think of the Knight-Templar and his ilk in Ivanhoe.