GAZE on the Abbey's ruined pile;
Does not the succoring ivy, keeping
Her watch around it, seem to smile,
As o'er a loved one sleeping?
One solitary turret gray
Still tells, in melancholy glory,
The legend of the Cheviot day,
The Percy's proudest border-story.
That day its roof was triumph's arch;
Then rang, from aisle to pictured dome,
The light step of the soldier's march,
The music of the trump and drum;
And babe and sire, the old, the young,
And the monk's hymn and minstrel's song,
And woman's pure kiss, sweet and long,
Welcomed her warrior home.
Wild roses by the Abbey towers
Are gay in their young bud and bloom; They were born of a race of funeral flowers That garlanded, in long-gone hours,
A templar's knightly tomb.
He died, the sword in his mailed hand,
On the holiest spot of the Blessed Land,
Where the Cross was damped with his dying breath, When blood ran free as festal wine,
And the sainted air of Palestine
Was thick with the darts of death.
Wise with the lore of centuries,
What tales, if there be "tongues in trees,"
Those giant oaks could tell,
Of beings born and buried here, -
Tales of the peasant and the peer,
Tales of the bridal and the bier,
The welcome and farewell, —
Since on their boughs the startled bird
First, in her twilight slumbers, heard
The Norman's curfew-bell.
And noble name and cultured land,
Palace, and park, and vassal band,
Are powerless to the notes of hand
Of Rothschild or the Barings.
The age of bargaining, said Burke,
Has come to-day the turbaned Turk
(Sleep, Richard of the lion heart!
Sleep on, nor from your cerements start)
Is England's friend and fast ally;
The Moslem tramples on the Greek,
And on the Cross and altar-stone,
And Christendom looks tamely on,
And hears the Christian maiden shriek,
And sees the Christian father die;
And not a sabre blow is given
For Greece and fame, for faith and heaven,
By Europe's craven chivalry.
You'll ask if yet the Percy lives
In the armed pomp of feudal state.
HOW STANDS THE GLASS AROUND?
The present representatives
Of Hotspur and his "gentle Kate"
Are some half-dozen serving-men
In the drab coat of William Penn;
A chambermaid, whose lip and eye,
And cheek, and brown hair, bright and curling,
Spoke nature's aristocracy;
And one, half groom, half seneschal,
Who bowed me through court, bower, and hall,
From donjon-keep to turret wall,
For ten-and-sixpence sterling.
HOW STANDS THE GLASS AROUND?
SAID TO HAVE BEEN SUNG BY GENERAL WOLFE THE EVENING BEFORE HE WAS KILLED AT QUEBEC.
Sent me by MADGE. Copied: Sunday, Oct. 9, 1836.
And the breeze, like an ancient bard, comes by,
And touches the solemn chords
Of the harp which death has hung on high;
And fancy weaves the words,-
Songs that have one unwearied tone,
Though they sing of many an age,
And tales to which each graven stone
Is but a titlepage!
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