University of Virginia Library

What awful images of ancient days,
What high and hallowed thoughts rush o'er my brain,
While I behold and tremble and adore
Thy melancholy pomp of sculptured Mind,
Thou Temple of the deathless! Pantheon
Of Genius deified!—Amid thy vaults,
Thy lone religious passages and aisles,
Thy pillar'd arches gray and antique shrines,
The spirit pants for breath and the heart holds
Its lifepulse silent for the undying Dead
Pour forth their glories here and all the air
Breathes of their immortality! We gaze
And gaze, and turn away, o'erpowered by thoughts
Vast as the blended intellects that float
Through the far cloisters of monastic gloom,
And high and holy as the eternal thrones,
Their seats of Power amid Earth's majesty!
How soars and shudders the astonished soul
Among the great assembly of the pride
And glory of the earth! the canonized
Of countless generations!—Here they dwell
Together—all the Majesty of Mind!
Bards of high mysteries! and warriors crowned
With gory glories! and wise statesmen skilled
To guide the golden argosy through storms
And tempests o'er a darkly swirling sea;
And orators, whose words of wisdom fell,
(Like the Athenian's eloquence among
The gurgling shores of rocky Salamis,)
Unheeded till too late! and here they sleep,
The mitred prelates of the land, whose ban
Was blight and blasting in the olden days,
When bondmen spirits, smitten to the dust,
Bowed down before the Dagon of their Faith,
Grasped the red cross, embraced a life of woe,
Adored a dream, and, like a vision, passed
To meet the doom of deeds before THE JUST,
Whom priestcraft never knew, or scorned, if known.
Beside the bold crusader sleeps the monk
Whose voice was like a trumpet, when he raised
The nations, and to the desert led them forth
To perish, like a herd on naked sands.
Here monarchs slumber—but unlawful hands
Have ceased to reverence the anointed head,
And crowns are crushed and sceptres broken now,
And not a voice cries Traitor! All is lost,
The pomp, the pageant and the banner'd pride,
The warrior's glory and the sovereign's power,
The churchman's bigot pride, the lady's charms!
St. Edward's crown hath mouldered into dust;
The ancient chair for the anointing hour
Rests on the crumbled clay of those who, erst,
Sate proudest there—the Dagons of their day!
—Oh! nought is left but tombs and trophies now,
Dark mausolea, where no empress weeps,
Shrines overthrown, where not a shadow steals
To worship—cenotaphs without a corse,
And monuments without memorial!

Oh! as I wander mid the holy light
Thrown from the pictured windows high aloft,
While every footfall, o'er the sculptured stones
Beneath, wakes ghostlike echoes, that along
The ancient walls steal with a low faint sound,
Like dim revealings of another world,
Each effigy dilates and glows with life
Around me, and the dusky light reveals
Their features like the faces we behold
In troubled visions, or the shadows seen
Gliding amid the gloamin, when the sound
Of flowing waters riseth on the soul
Like blessed music.—Ere they fade away,
Thus let me catch their wavering lineaments:—

Full in the sunset light far distant thrown
From yon stained window—lo! the Hero stands,
Whose voice shook empires! girt in iron mail,
With shivered shield and dinted sword, he stands,
And through the bars of his closed visor glare
His searching eyes like stars amid the storm.
His Anak form moves on—his armed tread
Tends to the battle or the tournament,
The foray or the joust—and hark! the shout,
The bugleblast of onset!—All is still.
Behold again! where wars the giant chief?
—There—cold and motionless, the Statue stands.

Yon poet's marble brow breathes thought; his eyes,
To all the wonted wildness of their light,
Wake from the sleep of ages, and the love,
The passion of his spirit wakes again.
Lo! now he grasps his long neglected lyre,
And inspiration in his cold heart burns;
Memory, the seraph, from her pictured wings
Scatters gay visions o'er his wasted heart,
And Fancy, beautiful spirit! o'er him bends
With looks of light, and Forms, in robes of pearl
And green and gold, hover around his harp,
Redolent of joy and perfect blessedness.
—Alas! the golden chords melt 'neath his touch,
And the dust eddies in the troubled air—
Dust! nought but dust all that we love in life,
Like our own hearts, a dewdrop and a dream!

From his cold couch in yonder cloister's cell
The monk starts up, as he were loitering late
From vesper hymn and hurries to his shrine
In the dark ruin of the chapelry.
Amazed, he stands; and, with a dreamy eye,
Like a delirious sleeper, gazes round;
The illumined missal and tall crucifix,
The waxlights and the censers, all have gone!
The altar-fire hath ceased! the worshippers
No more approach for earthly sacrifice;
The glorious beauty and high sanctitude
Of that fair church he served, e'en while he slept,
Hath passed away, like a bright evening cloud!

The Orator's pale lips, in quivering play,
Reveal the awful eloquence, that once
Shook thrones and sundered monarchies, but none
Heed now the voice, whose living magic held
The breathless heart submissive to its charm.
The strong delirious passions slumber on;
Hope dwells not here; Ambition hath forgot
His earth-o'ershadowing purposes; the spell
Of Praise, the fever of eternal Fame
Thrills not the silent soul—and hoary guilt
Hath passed the ordeal of its earthly doom.
How deadly still the Sepulchre of Pride!
The distant verger's faintest step o'ercomes
The spirit like the whisper of the Dead!
'T is a sage homily—that slow light fall
Of living foot in this cold world of Death.

Why burns thine eye with such triumphant light,
O proud Elizabeth? Lo! there the shrine
Where worship now the people of the earth,
Scotia's lost Mary—beauty's loveliest queen—
A sacrifice, if innocent, and thrice
A sacrifice if guilt confirmed her doom.
Leman of Essex! Tyrant Henry's child,
Meet daughter of thy sire! bend that proud head
And look beneath thy foot, O haughty Bess!
Thy broken sceptre lies by Mary's tomb!
Grandeur! thou hadst thy crown. Misfortune now
Hath her reward—the tears of half the world.

The features fade to duskier lineaments,
The spell hath passed—and all becomes again
A monumental mockery—but oh!
'T is a dread thing for living man to hold
Communion with this empire of the dead;
To think, to feel, to breathe a vivid life.
And know that every atom of the dust,
That mingles with the air, had thought and power,
And pillowed the same hopes on the same fears,
And toiled and struggled in the waves of woe,
Like the worn heart, that, old in early youth,
Poureth this dirge above the unanswering dead!
I hear the rush of countless wings; and now,
In solemn train and proud array, they pass,
The Great, the Wise, the Mighty and the Good,
Through the lone cloisters, and around the vaults
Spread the elysian vision of their pomp.
O'er hearts that quail and quiver, here they reign;
Throned on the majesty of ages here,
Triumphant Genius, from the thick pale dust
Invoking deities, eternal reigns,
While the bright suns, that lightened lower worlds,
Forever burn amid the heaven of heavens.

The old Cathedral clock tolls out the hour.
How solemnly each lone deep echo rolls
Through the cold World of Tombs! yet none awakes.
Ye effigies of glory and renown! ye shades
Of Mind! ye pictured palaces of Thought!
Hear ye that lingering knell?—'T is not for you!
Listen, all ye who wander here! each note
Of that old prophet is the voice of death
Sounding—Ye are the dust ye tread upon!
For him, who, far from country, friends and home,
With a quick heart and a wrought spirit, roams,
O Ancient Abbey! through thy pillar'd vaults,
When the mad fever of this life is o'er,
Far happier were the dying thought (as sweet
As breath of moonlight roses bathed in dew)
That he should lay his weary head to rest
On earth's green bosom, 'neath the smile of heaven,
Where sunlight and the beams of summer stars,
And the soft glory of the autumnal moon
And vernal showers and diamond dews would come,
And youths and maidens meet in joy and love,
Beneath the trailing willow and beside
The shorn turf of his nameless sepulchre,
Low in the violet vale, where mountains spread
The shadows of the eve—than that his corse
Should moulder in thy melancholy vaults,
Thou Sepulchre of Grandeur! where the sounds
Of multitudes commercing through the ways
Of Earth's one City-World re-echo harsh
Along thy mouldering shrines and cloisters dim.