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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 painted relics of a shrine
Of any worship, wake some thoughts divine.
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.
Amid the court a Gothic fountain played,
Symmetrical, but decked with carvings quaint—
Strange 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.
It was seeing how exactly all this was a copy of the original—how there stood the mighty window, shewing through it the garden and dog’s tomb—how the Virgin there still stood aloft with her child, distinct, bold, and beautiful—but the fountain was gone, that we could not help loudly expressing our regret. When the valet who attended us came to the inner court, “There,” he said, “you see is the fountain—it is all there, quite perfect.” “Yes, yes,” we could not help replying, “that is the very thing we are sorry for—its being all there. A man might cut off his nose, and put it in his pocket, and when any one wondered at his mutilated face, cry, ‘O, it is all here; I have it in my pocket.’ The mischief would be, that it was in the wrong place, and his face spoiled for ever.” To every visiter of taste, the abbey front must be thus injured whilst it and the poet’s description of it last together.
These are things to regret; for the rest, the place is a very pleasant place. The new stone-work is very substantially and well done; there is a great deal of modern elegance about the house; a fortune must have been spent upon it. The grounds before the new front are extremely improved; and the old gardens, with very correct feeling, have been suffered to retain their ancient character. An oak planted by Lord Byron is shewn; and why should he not have a tree as well as Shakspeare, Milton, and Johnson? The initials of himself and his sister upon a tree in the satyr-grove at the end of the garden, are said to have been pointed out by his sister herself, the Honourable Mrs. Leigh, on her visit there some time ago. The tree has two boles issuing from one root, a very appropriate emblem of their consanguinity.
The scenery around presents many features that recal incidents in his life, or passages in his poems. There are the houses where Fletcher and Rushton lived—the two followers of his, who are addressed in the ballad in the first canto of Childe Harold, beginning at the third stanza—
Come hither, hither, my little page:
But in the progress of improvement, the mill, where he used to be weighed, is just now destroyed. Down the valley, in front of the abbey, is a rich prospect over woods, and around are distant slopes scattered with young plantations, that in time will add eminently to the beauty of this secluded spot; and supply the place, in some degree, of those old and magnificent woods in which the abbey was formerly embosomed.
Here ended our ramble, having gone over ground and through places that the genius of one man in a brief life has sanctified to all times; for like us—