 | The Poems of Robert Bloomfield |  |
Sudden the change; at once to tread
The grass-grown mansions of the dead!
Awful to feeling, where, immense,
Rose ruin'd, gray magnificence;
The fair-wrought shaft all ivy-bound,
The towering arch with foliage crown'd,
That trembles on its brow sublime,
Triumphant o'er the spoils of time.
Here, grasping all the eye beheld,
Thought into mingling anguish swell'd,
And check'd the wild excursive wing,
O'er dust or bones of priest or king;
Or raised some blood-stain'd
warrior's ghost
To shout before his banner'd host.
But all was still.—The chequer'd floor
Shall echo to the step no more;
Nor airy roof the strain prolong
Of vesper chant or choral song.
The grass-grown mansions of the dead!
Awful to feeling, where, immense,
Rose ruin'd, gray magnificence;
The fair-wrought shaft all ivy-bound,
The towering arch with foliage crown'd,
That trembles on its brow sublime,
Triumphant o'er the spoils of time.
Here, grasping all the eye beheld,
Thought into mingling anguish swell'd,
And check'd the wild excursive wing,
O'er dust or bones of priest or king;
42
To shout before his banner'd host.
But all was still.—The chequer'd floor
Shall echo to the step no more;
Nor airy roof the strain prolong
Of vesper chant or choral song.
| The Poems of Robert Bloomfield | |