20 The Song of the Minster

turned to a smoke as of incense in the
wintry air, and floated about the high pillars
of the Minster.

Suddenly the music ceased, all save the
deep organ-drone.

Then Thomas heard the marvellous
antiphon repeated in the bitter darkness
outside; and that music, he knew, must be
the response of the galleries of stone kings
and queens, of abbots and virgin martyrs,
over the western portals, and of the mon-
strous gargoyles along the eaves.

When the music ceased in the outer dark-
ness, it was taken up again in the interior of
the Minster.

At last there came one stupendous united
cry of all the singers, and in that cry even
the organ-drone of the crypt, and the
clamour of the brute stones of pavement and
pillar, of wall and roof, broke into words
articulate. And the words were these:

Per singulos dies, benedicimus Te.
Day by day: we magnify Thee,
And we worship Thy name: ever world without end.

As the wind of the summer changes into
the sorrowful wail of the yellowing woods, so