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Or ashen grey, moor, scar and crag on,
Pale in the low moon’s shuddering beam,
Like the wan spectres of a dream.
So Blasius won the day, at least, he
Appeared to win, but soon his outlines
And his Achates, too, grow misty
Far down stream, and the night of doubt lines
The hollow vale, and hangs its pall
O’er mountain shrine, o’er echoing hall,
O’er whited kirk, o’er fretted altar,
O’er chanted rhymes, o’er periods rounded,
O’er creeds that fail, o’er faiths that falter,
All mouldering, in one white ring bounded,
Dim as the shadowy streams that pen
The pale, wan ghosts that once were men;
But Fuchs much fame and praise acquired
For charity and magnanimity.
True, had he dared, he would have fired
With his own hands the Calvin dimity:
History, though, must not note intentions,
Or fame were scarce as well-earned pensions.
And this same late-won reputation
Of charity towards foes heretical
He used, with persons high in station,
To get sealed up with seals hermetical
That fount of eloquence artesian
Had soused them with its periods Rhetian.
Next, to expunge it from their walls,
With mayor and judge he interceded:
Surely the Chiavennian Pauls
Their Blasio’s ministration needed;
