 | Three Hundred Sonnets |  |
5
TINTERN ABBEY.
Look on these ruins in a spirit of praise:Not only with the painter's well-pleased eye,
Nor with a poet's glance at times gone by
And all his gilded thoughts of olden days;
But, thankfully regard them as a phase
Of just Emancipation for the Soul;
For, as the feudal dungeon and its chain
Prison'd the Body of Man, and would again,
Had English freedom left them strong and whole,—
So held these glorious abbeys grim control
Over man's Heart and Mind, enslaving both
To crafty monk and superstitious rite:
Therefore, to find them crush'd be little loth,
But note their ruins with a new delight.
| Three Hundred Sonnets | |