The poetical works of William Wordsworth ... In six volumes ... A new edition |
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 | The poetical works of William Wordsworth |  |
87
XXI. DISSOLUTION OF THE MONASTERIES.
Threats come which no submission may assuage,No sacrifice avert, no power dispute;
The tapers shall be quenched, the belfries mute,
And, 'mid their choirs unroofed by selfish rage,
The warbling wren shall find a leafy cage;
The gadding bramble hang her purple fruit;
And the green lizard and the gilded newt
Lead unmolested lives, and die of age.
These two lines are adopted from a MS., written about the year 1770, which accidentally fell into my possession. The close of the preceding Sonnet on monastic voluptuousness is taken from the same source, as is the verse, ‘Where Venus sits,’ &c., and the line, ‘Once ye were holy, ye are holy still,’ in a subsequent Sonnet.
The owl of evening and the woodland fox
For their abode the shrines of Waltham choose:
Proud Glastonbury can no more refuse
To stoop her head before these desperate shocks—
She whose high pomp displaced, as story tells,
Arimathean Joseph's wattled cells.
| The poetical works of William Wordsworth | |