University of Virginia Library

Written amidst the ruins of Broomholm Priory, in Norfolk.

Broomholm, thy vaulted roofs and towers sublime,
Yield to the gradual touch of silent Time,
Whose luckless stole in dusky mantlings spread,
Veils the fair prospect of thy once famed head,
And all thy beauty now but dim appears
Through the dark backward of a thousand years,
Scared at the blast that hollow from the main,
Molests with sullen pause her ancient reign,
By the wan moon-beam oft the bird of night
Lengthens her feral note and wheels her flight
O'er the cold limbs that ever mouldering lie
Beneath the winter's wind and summer sky.
What though in vain with curious eye we trace
The tarnish'd semblance of the sacred place,
With eye profane its fading tints explore
That mark the features of the days of yore,
And fain would eager snatch from ruffian Time
The moss-grown fragment of a monkish rhyme;
What though no more at early dawn of day,
Eve's misty hour, or twilight's trembling ray,
With ken full blithe the mariner espies
Thy glittering domes and massy towers arise ;
Far from the dizzy mast he looks in vain
And longs to see his native shore again.
What though no scanty path we here descry
To cheer with foot of man the sorrowing eye,
Rough from the grasp of age thy walls deride
The slighter symmetry of modern pride,
Fancy, still fond, presents the long-drawn aile,
And feels the brooding Genius of the pile;
Her magic spell th'emblazon'd arms supplies,
And gives the gorgeous pane a thousand dyes;
Rebuilds the trophied tomb of many a knight
With high hung helm and ponderous spear bedight:
Still the damp shrines a grateful awe inspire,
Pale burn the lamps, and rapt the stoled choir,
Still the loud organ's peal I seem to hear
That wakes the slumbering soul, and fills the ravish'd ear.