Miscellaneous Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

Far rising 'bove the foliage of the wood,
An antique mansion might you there espy,
Such as in days of our forefathers stood,
Carved with device of quaintest imagery.
Long terraces and rich arcades were there,
And stateliest galleries made for walks and converse fair.

Within the court a marble fountain stream'd
With showers of silver radiance night and day;
Above the linden grove the wild heron scream'd,
And in the lake the swan's bright shadow lay.
While glancing through trim hedge and thicket green,
The peacock's jasper neck and emerald plumes were seen.

Stretch'd in the shade, the giant mastiff lay,
Whose midnight bay his faithful guard declar'd;
The aged hunter roam'd the pasture grey,
And here secure the timid pheasant pair'd.
How soft the foot of time had pass'd along,
Guarding his lov'd domain from injury and wrong.

The gilded vanes were glittering in the sun,
Turning, as Beauty turns to Flattery's breath;
And hark! the Turret-clocks one after one
Tell out the ceaseless hours;—with voice like death
Startling the silent noon—o'er wood and hill
Their iron-knell is heard—and all again is still.

Gray, in his Ode to Eton College, has authorized the use of the word “antique,” for “ancient,” in modern poetry: “Ye antique towers”; though the word was in constant use in Shakspeare, Spenser, and our older poets.

The startling effect, powerfully arresting the attention, of a large Clock, like those belonging to churches, striking the hour, amid the deep undisturbed silence of a summer noon, was more than once observed by the late Lord Grenville to an intimate friend who used to accompany him in his declining years, among his favourite scenes, walking by the side of his garden-chair, or reposing on the seats; and this observation was by him repeated to me near the very spot where it last occurred—the gardens at Dropmore. “The sound of that clock,” he said, “produces a very great impression on my mind.—Ah! there you will go on, and strike as usual, and your sound will continue to pass over these hills and groves, when I shall be no longer here to hear it!” This was the pensive and natural reflection of one then in extreme bodily weakness, and nervous debility; and he who listened to it from those lips, which he so much respected, is now also silent: and what passed in many of these familiar hours between the venerable statesman and the Poet, has probably remained in my memory alone, among other recollections of the same illustrious persons. I may here mention that Mr. Fox had his favourite exclamation when he first caught sight of the woods of St. Anne's Hill, to which he was so much attached, as they emerged from the autumnal mists, when he approached them; and there also was one present, who carefully remembered the words, he used to utter on that occasion.