A pilgrim, at the vesper hour,
I stood by Tinterne’s hallowed tower;
While o’er the walls, in golden hue,
The setting sun its farewell threw;
Then, paling slowly, flushed and fled,
Like a smile from the cheek of the recent dead.
* * * *
’Tis night—on the ivy-mantled walls
The shadows deepen, and darkness falls;
And forth from his roost, in the fretted aisle,
The solemn owl wheels round the pile;
But no lighted shrine, no vesper-song,
Is seen, or heard, these aisles among;
For hymnless now the day returns,
And voiceless sets on their nameless urns;
Nor laud, nor chant, nor matin chime,
Retard the fleeting steps of time.
* * * *
The Shrine, from which the anthem rushed,
When evening glowed, or morning blushed,
Like them, who reared the pile on high—
A landmark pointing to the sky;
Like them, by slow and sure decay,
That shrine is crumbling o’er their clay.—W.B., 1848.
The Abbey by Moonlight.
I tread the moonlit abbey! Oh, my soul,
How nobly art thou struggling to be free,
Spurning the temple’s, and the world’s control,
And feeling most inadequate to thee
The loftiest dome, the grandest scenery;
O’er views that would oppress thee or appal,
Rising, like light bark o’er the mounting sea;
And where, if weak or mortal thou wouldst fall,
Expanding to survey and compass more than all!
Palace of Piety! Devotion here
Should wear a crownèd angel’s robe of white,
And antedate the ardours of a sphere,
Where all is tranquil as this noon of night!
The moon—the regal moon—intensely bright,
Shines through the roseate window of the west;
Each shaft, an artificial stalactite
Of pendent stone, with slumber seems oppressed,
Or with a charmèd dream of peaceful rapture blessed.
And through thy lofty arch, a single star
Is gazing from a depth of spotless blue,
As if to learn how soft thy splendours are,
And feel them deeply, as I fain would do!
While now supine upon thy pave of dew
I let thy loveliness my soul pervade,
And pass with unimpeded influence through
Its quiet depths, like moonlight through thy shade,
To haunt with beauty still that shrine of hopes decayed.
Forgive me, abbey of the watered vale—
Forgive that, when I feel my spirit swell
With an unwonted energy, I fail
To hymn thy desolated glories well!
Not yet the chrysalis has burst its shell—
Not yet expanded its immortal wings;
The restless rudiments of vast powers tell
The soul a deathless thing; from earth she springs,
But fast and feebly falls, the while of thee she sings.
J. C. Earle, St. Edmund’s Hall, Oxford.
Tinterne Vesper-Hymn.
Like crimson on the dimpled Wye
Sleeps the glowing summer sky;
O’er the landscape, widely thrown,
Belted rock, and mountain cone;
Hamlet, tower, and haunted stream,
Are basking in the vesper-beam;
And holy friars, robed in white,
Cross them in the waning light—Ave Maria!
Now, along the abbey walls,
Soft the purple gloaming falls;
Aloft, on every turret’s height,
In the dim and doubtful light,
Here retiring, there advancing,
Weeds are waving, wings are glancing,
And yon effigies of stone
Seem to hail the vesper-tone—Ave Maria!
Deeper yet, and deeper still,
From winding stream, and wooded hill,
Shadowy cliff and rippling weir,
Nature’s music fills the ear;
Notes of mingling praise and prayer
Float along the solemn air,
Where, from cloistered arches dim,
Swells the everlasting hymn—Ave Maria!