 | A book of Bristol sonnets |  |
126
OLD AGE COMING ON;
OR, AT TINTERN ABBEY.
Peace, Strongbow, peace! God rest thee, Walter Clare;And thee, whose sons did bear thee to thy grave!
Maud, eldest daughter of the Marshall Earl of Pembroke, married Hugh Bigod, Earl of Norfolk, and afterwards John de Warren, Earl of Surrey; she died in the year 1248, and was buried in the choir. She was carried, dressed in her grave-clothes, and coroneted, upon a simple bier, on the shoulders of her four sons, Rogers, Hugh, Raplh, and John, and laid to rest under the high altar.
The tended turf has muffled all the Nave,
And tufts of green have carpeted the stair;
And if we hear not now the hum of Prayer,—
Far oxen's mellow cry, the fall of wave,
The pattering rain, the moan of winds that rave,
Such sounds, of your old lives will keep us 'ware!
No more De Bigod's deeds of battle flame
From Storied Panes along the Chancel floor,
For God has filled the Window to His Name
With Cloud, and Mountain, and with sunny Moor;
And through the open quatre-foils, in Spring,
Where sad Monks chanted, joyous Blackbirds Sing.
| A book of Bristol sonnets | |