| William Stanley Braithwaite, ed. The Book of Georgian Verse. 1909. | | | | The Rock of Cashel | | By 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. | | | | |
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