NIGHT AT SEA. 'Tis night, when Meditation bids us feel We once have loved, though love is at an end. The soul forgets her schemes of Hope and Pride, A thought, and claims the homage of a tear; A NIGHT SCENE AT THE SIEGE OF CORINTH. 'Tis midnight: on the mountains brown The cold round moon shines deeply down; And scarce their foam the pebbles shook, And the wide hum of that wild host Such as when winds and harp-strings meet, Wakes, though but for a stranger's knell. NORMAN ABBEY. To Norman Abbey whirl'd the noble pair,An old, old monastery once, and now Still older mansion, of a rich and rare It stood embosomed in a happy valley, His host with broad arms 'gainst the thunder-stroke; The branching stag swept down with all his herd, Before the mansion lay a lucid lake, Broad as transparent, deep and freshly fed By a river, which its soften'd way did take In currents through the calmer water spread Around the wild fowl nestled in the brake And sedges, brooding in their liquid bed: The woods sloped downwards to its brink, and stood With their green faces fixed upon the flood. Its outlet dashed into a deep cascade Sparkling with foam, until again subsiding Pursued its course, now gleaming, and now hiding Its windings through the woods; now clear, now blue, According as the skies their shadows threw. A glorious remnant of the Gothic pile, [apart (While yet the church was Rome's) stood half In a grand arch, which once screen'd many an aisle. These last had disappeared-a loss to Art: The first yet frown'd superbly o'er the soil, And kindled feelings in the roughest heart, Which mourn'd the power of time's or tempest's In gazing on that venerable arch. [march, Within a niche, nigh to its pinnacle, Twelve saints had once stood sanctified in stone; And these had fallen, not when the friars fell, But in the war which struck Charles from his throne, When each house was a fortalice-as tell The annals of full many a line undone,— The gallant Cavaliers, who fought in vain For those who knew not to resign or reign. But in a higher niche, alone, but crown'd, The Virgin Mother of the God-born child, With her son in her blessed arms, look'd round, Spared by some chance when all beside was spoil'd ; She made the earth below seem holy ground. This may be superstition, weak or wild, But even the faintest relics of a shrine Of any worship, wake some thoughts divine. A mighty window, hollow in the centre; Shorn of its glass of thousand colourings, Through which the deepen'd glories once could enter, Streaming from off the sun like seraphs' wings, Now yawns all desolate: now loud, now fainter, The gale sweeps through its fretwork; and oft sings The owl his anthem where the silenced quire Lie with their hallelujahs quench'd like fire. But in the noontide of the moon, and when The wind is winged from one point of heaven, There moans a strange unearthly sound, which then Is musical-a dying accent driven Through the huge arch, which soars and sinks again. Back to the night wind by the waterfall, Others, that some original shape, or form Shaped by decay perchance, hath given the power (Though less than that of Memnon's statue, warm In Egypt's rays, to harp at a fixed hour) To this grey ruin, with a voice to charm. Sad, but serene, it sweeps o'er tree or tower: The cause I know not, nor can solve; but such The fact: I've heard it,— -once perhaps too much. Amidst the court a Gothic fountain play'd, Symmetrical, but deck'd with carvings quaintStrange faces, like to men in masquerade, And here perhaps a monster, there a saint: The spring gush'd through grim mouths, of granite And sparkled into basins, where it spent Its little torrent in a thousand bubbles, Like man's vain glory, and his vainer troubles. [made, The mansion's self was vast and venerable, An exquisite small chapel had been able, Huge halls, long galleries, spacious chambers, join'd |