The film that floats before their eyes
The Temple’s Veil they call;
And the dust that on the Shewbread lies
Is holy over all.
Warn them of seas that slip our yoke
Of slow conspiring stars—
The ancient Front of Things unbroke
But heavy with new wars?
By—they are by with mirth and
tears.
Wit or the waste of Desire—
Cushioned about on the kindly years
Between the wall and the fire.
“Book—Book—Domesday Book!”
They were letting in the water for the evening stint
at Robert’s Mill, and the wooden Wheel where
lived the Spirit of the Mill settled to its nine hundred
year old song: “Here Azor, a freeman, held
one rod, but it never paid geld. Nun-nun-nunquam
geldavit. Here Reinbert has one villein and
four cottars with one plough—and wood for
six hogs and two fisheries of sixpence and a mill of
ten shillings—unum molinum—one
mill. Reinbert’s mill—Robert’s
Mill. Then and afterwards and now—tunc
et post et modo—Robert’s Mill.
Book—Book—Domesday Book!”
“I confess,” said the Black Rat on the
crossbeam, luxuriously trimming his whiskers—“I
confess I am not above appreciating my position and
all it means.” He was a genuine old English
black rat, a breed which, report says, is rapidly
diminishing before the incursions of the brown variety.
“Appreciation is the surest sign of inadequacy,”
said the Grey Cat, coiled up on a piece of sacking.
“But I know what you mean,” she added.
“To sit by right at the heart of things—eh?”
“Yes,” said the Black Rat, as the old
mill shook and the heavy stones thuttered on the grist.
“To possess—er—all this
environment as an integral part of one’s daily
life must insensibly of course ... You see?”
“I feel,” said the Grey Cat. “Indeed,
if we are not saturated with the spirit of
the Mill, who should be?”
“Book—Book—Domesday Book!”
the Wheel, set to his work, was running off the tenure
of the whole rape, for he knew Domesday Book backwards
and forwards: “In Ferle tenuit Abbatia
de Wiltuna unam hidam et unam virgam et dimidiam.
Nunquam geldavit. And Agemond, a freeman,
has half a hide and one rod. I remember Agemond
well. Charmin’ fellow—friend
of mine. He married a Norman girl in the days
when we rather looked down on the Normans as upstarts.
An’ Agemond’s dead? So he is.
Eh, dearie me! dearie me! I remember the wolves
howling outside his door in the big frost of Ten Fifty-Nine....
Essewelde hundredum nunquam geldum reddidit.
Book! Book! Domesday Book!”
