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I. GOD, with a mighty and an outstretched hand, | |
| Stays thee from sinking, and ordains to be | |
| His witness lifted ’twixt the Irish Sea | |
| And that still beauteous, once faith-hallowed land. | |
| Stand as a sign, monastic prophet, stand! | 5 |
| Thee, thee the speechless, God hath stablished thee | |
| To be his Baptist, crying ceaselessly | |
| In spiritual deserts like that Syrian sand! | |
| Man’s little race around thee creep and crawl, | |
| And dig, and delve, and roll their thousand wheels; | 10 |
| Thy work is done: henceforth sabbatical | |
| Thou restest, while the world around thee reels; | |
| But every scar of thine and stony rent | |
| Cries to a proud, weak age, “Repent, repent!” | |
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II. VIRTUE goes forth from thee and sanctifies | 15 |
| That once so peaceful shore whose peace is lost, | |
| To-day doubt-dimmed, and inly tempest-tost, | |
| Virtue most healing when sealed up it lies | |
| In relics, like thy ruins. Enmities | |
| Thou hast not. Thy gray towers sleep on mid dust; | 20 |
| But in the resurrection of the just | |
| Thy works, contemned to-day, once more shall rise. | |
| Guard with thy dark compeer, cloud-veiled Black Coombe, | |
| Till then a land to nature and to grace | |
| So dear. Thy twin in greatness, clad with gloom, | 25 |
| Is grander than with sunshine on his face: | |
| Thou mid abjection and the irreverent doom | |
| Art holier—O, how much!—to hearts not base. | |
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