And fools, who came to scoff, remained to pray. His ready smile a parent's warmth expressed, To them his heart, his love, his griefs were given, But all his serious thoughts had rest in heaven. As some tall cliff that lifts its awful form, Swells from the vale, and midway leaves the storm, Though round its breast the rolling clouds are spread, Eternal sunshine settles on its head. NOTES. 1 Auburn, supposed to be the village 3 Green, the village green. 8 Sleights, clever tricks. 9 Mistrustless, having no suspicion, unconscious of. 10 Lawn, here means a wide tract of country. 11 Tyrant, referring to a wealthy landowner who purchased an estate near Ballymahon and evicted many of the tenants near "Sweet Auburn for non-payment of rent, so that he might enlarge the park round his mansion. 12 Domain, estate. is now allowed to be tilled by the 14 Sedges, flags or coarse grass. 17 Hastening ills, misfortunes crowd- to 18 Accumulates, heaped or piled up. 21 22 Sober, referring to the solemn 24 Copse, a coppice, or clump of trees. 26 Vagrant, a wandering beggar. 13 Half a tillage. Only half the land 29 The bed, &c., the deathbed. * 135 140 145 A VISIT TO HENRY VII.'S CHAPEL. 1. I stood before the entrance to Henry the Seventh's Chapel. A flight of steps lead up to it, through a deep and gloomy, but magnificent arch. Great gates of brass, richly and delicately wrought, turn heavily upon their hinges, as if proudly reluctant to admit the feet of common mortals into this most gorgeous of sepulchres. 3 2 2. On entering, the eye is astonished by the pomp of architecture, and the elaborate beauty of sculptured detail. The very walls are wrought into universal ornament, incrusted with tracery and scooped into niches, crowded with the statues of saints and martyrs. 3. Stone seems, by the cunning labour of the chisel, to have been robbed of its weight and density, suspended aloft, as if by magic, and the fretted roof achieved with the wonderful minuteness and airy security of a cobweb. 4. Along the sides of the chapel are the lofty stalls of the Knights of the Bath, richly carved of oak, though with the grotesque decorations of Gothic architecture. On the pinnacles of the stalls are affixed the helmets and crests of the knights, with their scarfs and swords, and above them are suspended their banners. In the midst of this grand mausoleum * stands the sepulchre of its founder-his effigy, with that of his queen, extended on a sumptuous 4 tomb, and the whole surrounded by a superbly wrought brazen railing. 5 5. There is a sad dreariness in this magnificence; this strange mixture of tombs and trophies; these emblems of living and aspiring ambition, close beside mementoes which show the dust and oblivion in which all must sooner or later terminate. Nothing impresses the mind with a deeper feeling of loneliness, than to tread the silent and deserted scene of former throng and pageant. 6. On looking round on the vacant stalls of the knights and their esquires, and on the rows of dusty but gorgeous banners that were once borne before them, my imagination conjured up the scene when this hall was bright with the valour and beauty of the land; glittering with the splendour of jewelled rank and military array; alive with the tread of many feet and the hum of an admiring multitude. 7. All had passed away; the silence of death had settled again upon the place, interrupted only by the casual chirping of birds, which had found their way into the chapel, and built their nests among its friezes and pendantssure signs of solitariness and desertion. 8. When I read the names inscribed on the banners, they were those of men scattered far and wide about the world; some tossing upon distant seas; some under arms in distant lands; some mingling in the busy intrigues of courts and cabinets; all seeking to deserve one more 6 |