Ernest The Rule of Right. Second Edition [by Capel Lofft] |
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100
And saw the spot as their guide pointed it:
But such a spot as seemed meeter to hail,
Not with uproar and laughter, but still deep
Complacence, softly musing. A wood-ring
Rounded the hill, else bare; with straggling trees,
Stunted, the most, and dwarf, but wearing yet
A flushful cloak of fresh rich foliage,
Screening their ragged stems: with, here and there,
Some few uptowering in statelier growth
To crown the copse. A castle, trenched around,
Signalled that lovely spot in the yore days
With warlike stamp; frowning o'er the landscape fair,
Like helm on maiden's brow. But time, allied
With Nature and her elements 'gainst man,
Had bared those stone walls first to a skeleton,
And then mouldered the bones: confounding all
Its forlorn glory into one rude heap,
To witness, as a shattered trophy, his might
To men; but of those thrilling warrior days
Leaving the Painter little to record,
But all enough to the Poet, who lacks no
Monumental mass to frame his images,
But shapes dead stones to stately towers again
With Theban incantation.
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