University of Virginia Library


27

AT DOVER CASTLE.

Look upward on yon desolated pile,
And as you mark its ruins lone and grey,
Mourn not, O mourn not, for its long decay!
But see—how gentle Nature, with a smile,
Sweet as a mother's, anxious to beguile
Her infant to her bosom, gone astray,
Calls on the ocean gales from yonder bay,
To breathe upon its mouldering towers; the while
The fox-glove and the wild flower, o'er the walls
Drop silently their seeds; and sun, and rain,
And summer dews, with fairy hands unchain
Each granite-link; and then anon it falls,
Obedient to that voice, which once again
So tenderly her offspring lost recalls.