Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
Ireland: Vol. V. 1876–79. | | | | Appendix: Cashel | | The Rock of Cashel | | Sir Aubrey de Vere (1788–1846) |
| | | ROYAL and saintly Cashel! I would gaze | |
| Upon the wreck of thy departed powers, | |
| Not in the dewy light of matin hours, | |
| Nor the meridian pomp of summer’s blaze, | |
| But at the close of dim autumnal days, | 5 |
| When the sun’s parting glance, through slanting showers, | |
| Sheds o’er thy rock-throned battlements and towers | |
| Such awful gleams as brighten o’er Decay’s | |
| Prophetic cheek. At such a time, methinks, | |
| There breathes from thy lone courts and voiceless aisles | 10 |
| A melancholy moral; such as sinks | |
| On the lone traveller’s heart, amid the piles | |
| Of vast Persepolis on her mountain stand, | |
| Or Thebes half buried in the desert sand. | | | | |
|
|
