It was a little island where he dwelt,

Or rather a lone rock, barren and bleak,

Short scanty herbage spotting with dark spots

Its gray stone surface. Never mariner

Approach’d that rude and uninviting coast,

Nor ever fisherman his lonely bark

Anchored beside its shore. It was a place

Befitting well a rigid anchoret,

Dead to the hopes, and vanities, and joys

And purposes of life; and he had dwelt

Many long years upon that lonely isle,

For in ripe manhood he abandoned arms,

Honours and friends and country and the world,

And had grown old in solitude. That isle

Some solitary man in other times

Had made his dwelling-place; and Henry found

The little chapel that his toil had built

Now by the storms unroofed, his bed of leaves

Wind-scattered, and his grave o’ergrown with grass,

And thistles, whose white seeds winged in vain

Withered on rocks, or in the waves were lost.

So he repaired the chapel’s ruined roof,

Clear’d the grey lichens from the altar-stone,

And underneath a rock that shelter’d him

From the sea blasts, he built his hermitage.

The peasants from the shore would bring him food

And beg his prayers; but human converse else

He knew not in that utter solitude,

Nor ever visited the haunts of men

Save when some sinful wretch on a sick bed

Implored his blessing and his aid in death.

That summons he delayed not to obey,

Tho’ the night tempest or autumnal wind.

Maddened the waves, and tho’ the mariner,

Albeit relying on his saintly load,

Grew pale to see the peril. So he lived

A most austere and self-denying man,

Till abstinence, and age, and watchfulness

Exhausted him, and it was pain at last

To rise at midnight from his bed of leaves

And bend his knees in prayer. Yet not the less

Tho’ with reluctance of infirmity,

He rose at midnight from his bed of leaves

And bent his knees in prayer; but with more zeal

More self-condemning fervour rais’d his voice

For pardon for that sin, till that the sin

Repented was a joy like a good deed.

One night upon the shore his chapel bell

Was heard; the air was calm, and its far sounds

Over the water came distinct and loud.

Alarmed at that unusual hour to hear

Its toll irregular, a monk arose.

The boatmen bore him willingly across

For well the hermit Henry was beloved.

He hastened to the chapel, on a stone

Henry was sitting there, cold, stiff and dead,

The bell-rope in his band, and at his feet

The lamp [11] that stream’d a long unsteady light

[11] This story is related in the English Martyrology, 1608.