Beneath yon hillock, by the embow'ring grove,
The once-fam'd convent's mouldering walls arise;
Come, pensive muse, that lov'st these scenes to rove,
Now rising vesper rules the evening skies!
Explore the gloom with silent step, and slow,
While musing melancholy hovers near;
Haply from hence some moral truth may flow,
And frame a song that virtue's self may hear.
This sacred pile, for solitude design'd,
To pious age might form a still retreat;
But bigot zeal here rankled in the mind,
And superstition fix'd her baneful seat.
Yon pending column, moss ygrown and rude,
Now torn by time, and faithless to its trust;
Once mark'd the proud spot where a temple stood,
And mystic rites made consecrate its dust.
'Twere impious thought these cloister'd shades to roam,
Or wake dull echo with one cheerful sound;
No stranger eye might meditate the dome,
No foot unhallow'd tread the sacred ground.
But now ev'n here the slimy serpent crawls,
And hence the gloom-born owlet wheels her way;
Loud shrieks the hoarse bat from the hollow walls,
And the gaunt night-wolf meditates his prey.
As o'er the mind these varied visions steal,
They speak instruction to the musing bard;
From these vain efforts of religious zeal,
How clear the moral, yet how few regard.
In vain may priests their mystic rites repeat,
The dome still moulders with th' unhallow'd dust;
For virtue only consecrates her seat,
Her sacred temple is the heart that's just.
How dark the times when wily monks combin'd,
And shrouded truth in superstitious gloom;
Represt the noblest energies of mind,
Prescrib'd man's path, and fix'd his final doom.
If crimes untold some parting spirit felt,
Persuasive gold to holy friar was giv'n;
Low at the altar brib'd devotion knelt,
And mammon wing'd the venal pray'r to heav'n.