Oh! could yon gloomy pile reveal
The thousand tales its records bear,
And rend the dark mysterious seal
That Time has fixed for ever there,
Perchance ’twould tell of pain and care,
The same unvarying round of woe,
The same dark chain of human ills
That links us all to life below.
’Twould tell of horrors dark and dire,
That well the sternest heart might thrill,
How man with rapine, sword, and fire,
Had wrought with zeal his brother’s ill.
Strange that ungrateful man should fill
The cup of woe, for pride or pelf,
Yet madly, fondly, vainly hope,
To taste the streams of bliss himself.
’Twould tell how bright, to Childhood’s eyes,
The glory of existence seems,
How swiftly life’s ensuing hours
Lose one by one their golden gleams.
How fondly Hope’s delusive dreams
The hearts of men with smiles enslave,
How those forlorn and weary here,
May learn to look beyond the grave.
And Fancy often wanders back,
Through Time on her enchanted wings,
To snatch one legend from the gloom
That age about thy ruin flings.
And thus Imagination sings
In fond conceit and varied lay,
With all a Poet’s trembling pride,
“A tale of Broomholme’s Abbey grey.”
The northern blast is sighing now,
In every withered leafless bough,
The dirge of the departed year;
And the lone sea-bird’s dismal wail,
That ever comes in storm and gale,
Foretells the gathering tempest near.
The gloom of night is deepening fast,
And on the wild and fitful blast
The stormy clouds like shadows fly;
And darkened by their rapid flight,
The pale and placid orb of night
Is shrouded from the seaman’s eye.
The vivid lightning’s transient flash,
And then the deafening thunder crash,
Proclaims the elemental war;
And when the lightning leaves the skies,
And when the rolling thunder dies,
Hark, how the raging waters roar.
The wild waves that in wanton play
Fling to the winds their feather’d spray,
But seem to mock the angry sky;
But seem to sport in maddening pride,
When all is dread and dark beside,
And ghastly Death is hovering nigh.
* * * * * *
Morn: oh! how many anxious eyes
Have watched the live-long night for thee,
That from the threshold of the skies,
Now looks o’er a tempestuous sea;
The ocean that so softly bright
Hath mirror’d oft the Queen of Night,
In lustrous lines of liquid light,
And, oh! hath looked so calm and fair,
As if no storm could gather there.
Like to those living lights that shine
So pure and placid from the eyes,
When at Religion’s holy shrine
The humble soul in rapture lies,
And gloomy passions wake within,
That lead away the heart to sin;
Then all that looked so fair and bright,
So pure in its own sportive glee,
Becomes a torture and a blight,
And wilder than the raging sea.