‘Half-buried there lies many a broken bust,
And obelisk and urn, o’erthrown by time,
And many a cherub here descends in dust,
From the rent roof and portico sublime;
Where reverend shrines in Gothic grandeur stood,
The nettle or the noxious nightshade spreads;
And ashlings, wafted from the neighbouring wood,
Through the worn turrets wave their trembling heads.’”
These objections have been repeated by other writers of unquestionable taste; but we may venture to predict, that among the numerous strangers who annually resort to these deserted shrines, few will return home without expressions of unqualified admiration of “Tinterne, as it is.” The care employed by its noble owner in arresting the progress of decay, is creditable to his taste and reverence for antiquity. Had these ruins been consigned, as some would have had them, to the wasting hand of time, their vaulted wonders would long ere now have fallen piecemeal into the area beneath; but wherever a stone is observed to be losing its hold, the hand of art is immediately applied to restore it to its original place: and thus, what might have passed away in a few inclement seasons, has been propped up and secured for the delight of many generations to come.
And lo, these mouldering fragments to sustain,
Her graceful network nature’s hand hath hung;
Bound every arch with a supporting chain,
And round each wall her living verdure flung;
And o’er the floor that sepulchres the dead—
The saints and heroes of departed years;
The flower of memory lifts its modest head,
And morning sheds her tributary tears.—W.B.
Poetical Votaries.—Having quoted so largely from chroniclers and other prose writers in the preceding pages, we must not quit the subject of Tinterne Abbey, without selecting a few stanzas from those minstrels who have sought and found inspiration on the spot. Wordsworth, from whose poem on the Wye we have already quoted, addresses the following
Lines to a Cistercian Monastery.
‘Here man more purely lives, less oft doth fall,
More promptly rises, walks with nicer heed,
More safely rests, dies happier; is freed
Earlier from cleansing fires, and gains withal
A brighter crown.’ On yon Cistercian wall
That confident assurance may be read;
And, to like shelter, from the world have fled
Increasing multitudes. The potent call
Doubtless shall cheat full oft the heart’s desire;
Yet, while the rugged age on pliant knee
Vows to rapt Fancy humble fealty,
A gentler life spreads round the holy spires;
Where’er they rise the sylvan waste retires,
And aëry harvests crown the fertile lea.
Tinterne Abbey on the Wye.
Sudden the change; at once to tread
The grass-grown mansions of the dead.
Awful to feeling, where, immense,
Rose ruin’d grey magnificence;
The fair wrought shaft all ivy-bound,
The tow’ring arch with foliage crowned,
That trembles on its brow sublime,
Triumphant o’er the spoils of time.
There, grasping all the eye beheld,
Thought into mingling anguish swell’d,
And checked the wild excursive wing,
O’er dust or bones of priest or king;
Or rais’d some Strongbow warrior’s ghost,
To shout before his banner’d host.
But all was still. The chequered floor
Shall echo to the step no more;
No airy roof the strain prolong,
Of vesper chant or choral song—
Tinterne! thy name shall hence sustain
A thousand raptures in my brain;
Joys, full of soul, all strength, all eye,
That cannot fade, that cannot die.—Bloomfield.
Evening at Tinterne Abbey.