| |
(From Don Juan)
TO Norman Abbey whirled the noble pair, | |
| 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 | 5 |
| Withal: it lies perhaps a little low, | |
| Because the monks preferred a hill behind, | |
| To shelter their devotion from the wind. | |
| |
| It stood embosomed in a happy valley, | |
| Crowned by high woodlands, where the Druid oak | 10 |
| 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, | 15 |
| To quaff a brook which murmured like a bird. | |
| |
| Before the mansion lay a lucid lake, | |
| Broad as transparent, deep, and freshly fed | |
| By a river, which its softened way did take | |
| In currents through the calmer water spread | 20 |
| 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. | |
| |
| Its outlet dashed into a deep cascade, | 25 |
| 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 | 30 |
| Its windings through the woods; now clear, now blue, | |
| According as the skies their shadows threw. | |
| |
| A glorious remnant of the Gothic pile | |
| (While yet the church was Rome’s) stood half apart | |
| In a grand arch, which once screened many an aisle. | 35 |
| 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. | 40 |
| |
| Within a niche, nigh to its pinnacle, | |
| 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 | 45 |
| The annals of full many a line undone,— | |
| The gallant cavaliers, who fought in vain | |
| For those who knew not to resign or reign. | |
| |
| But in a higher niche, alone, but crowned, | |
| The Virgin Mother of the God-born child, | 50 |
| 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 | 55 |
| Of any worship wake some thoughts divine. | |
| |
| A mighty window, hollow in the centre, | |
| Shorn of its glass of thousand colorings, | |
| Through which the deepened glories once could enter, | |
| Streaming from off the sun like seraph’s wings, | 60 |
| 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. | |
| |
| But in the noontide of the moon, and when | 65 |
| 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 | 70 |
| Back to the night-wind by the waterfall, | |
| And harmonized by the old choral wall; | |
| |
| Others, that some original shape or form, | |
| Shaped by decay perchance, hath given the power | |
| (Though less than that of Memnon’s statue, warm | 75 |
| 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. | 80 |
| |
| Amidst 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 rushed through grim mouths, of granite made, | 85 |
| And sparkled into basins, where it spent | |
| Its little torrent in a thousand bubbles, | |
| Like man’s vain glory and his vainer troubles. | |
| |
| The mansion’s self was vast and venerable, | |
| With more of the monastic than has been | 90 |
| 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, | 95 |
| And spoke more of the baron than the monk. | |
| |
| Huge balls, long galleries, spacious chambers, joined | |
| By no quite lawful marriage of the arts, | |
| Might shock a connoisseur; but, when combined, | |
| Formed a whole which, irregular in parts, | 100 |
| 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. | |
| |
