VI.
ON THE SANCTUARY.
To play old ruin on a desert's site
The rambling stones their chiselled features spread,
And crumbled walls bestow their daily mite
On sacred earth, the ash-pit of the dead.
Home reared for solitude! the cloister's pride
Is roofless, jaggèd, ivy-cropped, and lone.
No more the gravestones echo to the stride,
The day of shrove and feast alike are gone.
Within each chink the lichen guards its hold
To ripen in the fervour of the moon,
To draw a modest pension from her cold,
And revel in the fulness of her noon.
The pointed arches let her glory pass,
Their faded beauty softened in her ray;
The walls see pity in her orbèd glass,
And hail her as the ghost of ancient day!
Poised on the moonlit aisle tall columns cast
Their meaning shadows on the floor of death.
Mute is the chant except along the past,
Where silent echo holds the courtly breath.
The voice of monks and mitred abbot hushed,
The table and its waxen lights effaced,
The rich insignia on the altar crushed,
In heaven is yet their holy record placed.
The crucifix no longer is divine,
For centuries adored in worship's stead:
Rent are the naked mullions o'er the shrine;
In dust the painted saint has bowed his head.
The steadfast pines that date religion's birth,
Set by some abbot once to story known;
That stand apart and measure girth to girth,
Have now the stature of the earth outgrown.
In straggling waters still the fishes leap
And low the willow stoops to say its grace,
An hourly service o'er the mouldering heap
That sanctifies to time the honoured place.
There is the crystal well; a water-grass
Stirs into emerald waves the liquid brink;
There thirst the longing lips of lad and lass,
But never more the living spring to drink.
With arch by buttress stayed the stately bridge
Spans the fast stream, the stranger of the vale
Whose noise enchants the overhearing ridge,
Sole minstrelsy within the sacred pale.
Tower, from all towers that bears aloft the palm!
There better saints poured out a soul of pain,
But now the heavenward chanting of the psalm
Is silence raining back on earth again.
The truant boy, from overwhelming heights,
Awe-struck stands gazing at it with dismay:
He clambers down the thicket and alights,
But dreads the adder's-tongue that guards the way.
The man mature with sadder view admires,
Catched in the wondrous reverie of the hour.
He gives his living grandeur to the spires,
And mourns the downfal of religious pow'r.
EPODE.
Hut cracked and crazy, open to the blast
That whines a dirge, and makes the sick man sad:
By tumbling towers in ruin not surpassed,
Nor less by slow compassion ivy-clad,
Has it no simple wrong for thee to tell
While the wan abbey works the sleepy spell?
Has he no charm, the poor old man inside?
To humble ruin close akin he stands,
Though down his wrinkled cheek no moonlight glide,
Though ivy cling not to his shrivelled hands?
His body wasted, and his senses dead,
The hum of sorrow still runs in his head.
O life monastic, story of the poor,
The hut holds thy traditionary cells;
The fast is kept alone within the door
Where self-denial through compulsion dwells.
'Tis there eyes open, and again are closed,
Under the vow by poverty imposed.
