And from beneath his boughs were seen to sally

The dappled foresters; as Day awoke,
The branching stag swept down with all his herd,
To quaff a brook which murmured like a bird.

LVII.

Before the mansion lay a lucid Lake,1

Broad as transparent, deep, and freshly fed
By a river, which its softened way did take
In currents through the calmer water spread
Around the wildfowl 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.

LVIII.

Its outlet dashed into a deep cascade,

Sparkling with foam, until again subsiding, Its shriller echoes-like an infant made Quiet-sank into softer ripples, gliding

Into a rivulet; and thus allayed,

Pursued its course, now gleaming, and now hiding Its windings through the woods; now clear, now blue, According as the skies their shadows threw.

LIX.

A glorious remnant of the Gothic pile

(While yet the Church was Rome's) stood half apart In a grand Arch, which once screened many an aisle. These last had disappeared-a loss to Art:

The first yet frowned superbly o'er the soil,

And kindled feelings in the roughest heart,

Which mourned the power of Time's or Tempest's march, In gazing on that venerable Arch.".

i. Its shriller echo

ii. Which sympathized with Time's and Tempest's march,
In gazing on that high and haughty Arch.—[MS.]

1. [Compare "Epistle to Augusta," stanza x. line 1, Poetical Works, 1901, iv. 68.]

2. [The little wood which Byron planted at the south-east corner of the upper or "Stable" Lake, known as "Poet's Corner," still slopes to the water's brink. Nor have the wild-fowl diminished. The lower of the three lakes is specially reserved as a breeding-place.]

LX.

Within a niche, nigh to its pinnacle,

Twelve Saints had once stood sanctified in stone; But 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,1 who fought in vain For those who knew not to resign or reign.

LXI.

But in a higher niche, alone, but crowned,
The Virgin-Mother of the God-born Child,
With her Son in her blessed arms, looked round,

Spared by some chance when all beside was spoiled: 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.

LXII.

A mighty window, hollow in the centre,
Shorn of its glass of thousand colourings,
Through which the deepened glories once could enter,
Streaming from off the Sun like Seraph's 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 quenched like fire.

LXIII.

But in the noontide of the moon, and when
The wind is wingéd 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.
Some deem it but the distant echo given

Back to the night wind by the waterfall,

And harmonised by the old choral wall:

i. But in the stillness of the moon —.

1. [See lines "On Leaving Newstead Abbey," stanza 5, Poetical Works, 1898, i. 3, note 1.]

LXIV.

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.2

LXV.

Amidst the court a Gothic fountain played,

Symmetrical, but decked with carvings quaintStrange faces, like to men in masquerade,

And here perhaps a monster, there a saint: The spring gushed through grim mouths of granite made, And sparkled into basins, where it spent

Its little torrent in a thousand bubbles,

Like man's vain Glory, and his vainer troubles.

LXVI.

The Mansion's self was vast and venerable,
With more of the monastic than has been
Elsewhere preserved: the cloisters still were stable,
The cells, too, and Refectory, I ween:

An exquisite small chapel had been able,
Still unimpaired, to decorate the scene;

The rest had been reformed, replaced, or sunk,
And spoke more of the baron than the monk.

LXVII.

Huge halls, long galleries, spacious chambers, joined
By no quite lawful marriage of the arts,

1. [Vide ante, The Deformed Transformed, Part I. line 532, Poetical Works, 1901, v. 497.].

2. This is not a frolic invention: it is useless to specify the spot, or in what county, but I have heard it both alone and in company with those who will never hear it more. It can, of course, be accounted for by some natural or accidental cause, but it was a strange sound, and unlike any other I have ever heard (and I have heard many above and below the surface of the earth produced in ruins, etc., etc., or caverns).-[MS.]

["The unearthly sound" may still be heard at rare intervals, but it is difficult to believe that the "huge arch" can act as an Æolian harp. Perhaps the smaller lancet windows may vocalize the wind.]