Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
England: Vols. I–IV. 1876–79.
Newstead Abbey
By Lord Byron (1788–1824)T
An old, old monastery once, and now
Still older mansion, of a rich and rare
Mixed Gothic, such as artists all allow
Few specimens yet left us can compare
Withal: it lies perhaps a little low,
Because the monks preferred a hill behind,
To shelter their devotion from the wind.
Crowned by high woodlands, where the Druid oak
Stood like Caractacus in act to rally
His host, with broad arms ’gainst the thunder-stroke;
And from beneath his boughs were seen to sally
The dappled foresters,—as day awoke,
The branching stag swept down with all his herd,
To quaff a brook which murmured like a bird.
Broad as transparent, deep, and freshly fed
By a river, which its softened way did take
In currents through the calmer water spread
Around; the wild-fowl nestled in the brake
And sedges, brooding in their liquid bed;
The woods sloped downwards to its brink, and stood
With their green faces fixed upon the flood.
Sparkling with foam, until again subsiding
Its shriller echoes—like an infant made
Quiet—sank into softer ripples, gliding
Into a rivulet; and, thus allayed,
Pursued its course, now gleaming, and now hiding
Its windings through the woods; now clear, now blue,
According as the skies their shadows threw.
(While yet the church was Rome’s) stood half apart
In a grand arch, which once screened many an aisle.
These last had disappeared,—a loss to art:
The first yet frowned superbly o’er the soil,
And kindled feelings in the roughest heart,
Which mourned the power of time’s or tempest’s march,
In gazing on that venerable arch.
Twelve saints had once stood sanctified in stone;
But these had fallen, not when the friars fell,
But in the war which struck Charles from his throne,
When each house was a fortalice,—as tell
The annals of full many a line undone,—
The gallant cavaliers, who fought in vain
For those who knew not to resign or reign.
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 faintest relics of a shrine
Of any worship wake some thoughts divine.
Shorn of its glass of thousand colorings,
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 choir
Lie with their hallelujahs quenched like fire.
The wind is winged from one point of heaven,
There moans a strange unearthly sound, which then
Is musical,—a dying accent driven
Through the huge arch, which soars and sinks again.
Some deem it but the distant echo given
Back to the night-wind by the waterfall,
And harmonized by the old choral wall;
Shaped by decay perchance, hath given the power
(Though less than that of Memnon’s statue, warm
In Egypt’s rays, to harp at a fixed hour)
To this gray ruin, with a voice to charm.
Sad, but serene, it sweeps o’er tree or tower:
The cause I know not, nor can solve; but such
The fact;—I ’ve heard it,—once perhaps too much.
Symmetrical, but decked with carvings quaint,—
Strange faces, like to men in masquerade,
And here perhaps a monster, there a saint:
The spring rushed 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.
With more of the monastic than has been
Elsewhere preserved; the cloisters still were stable,
The cells too and refectory, I ween:
An exquisite small chapel had been able,
Still unimpaired, to decorate the scene;
The rest had been reformed, replaced, or sunk,
And spoke more of the baron than the monk.
By no quite lawful marriage of the arts,
Might shock a connoisseur; but, when combined,
Formed a whole which, irregular in parts,
Yet left a grand impression on the mind,
At least of those whose eyes are in their hearts.
We gaze upon a giant for his stature,
Nor judge at first if all be true to nature.