With her Son in her blest arms, look'd round, Spared by some chance when all beside was spoil'd; This may be superstition, weak or wild, A mighty window, hollow in the centre, Shorn of its glass of thousand colourings, Thro' which the deepen'd glories once could enter, Streaming off from the sun like seraph's wings, Now yawns all desolate: now loud, now fainter The gale sweeps thro' its fretwork, and oft sings The owl his anthem, where the silenced quire Lie with their hallelujahs quench'd like fire. But in the noontide of the moon, and when The wind is winged from one point of heav'n, There moans a strange unearthly sound, which then Is musical — a dying accent driven Thro' the huge oak, which soars and sinks again. Some deem it but the distant echo giv'n Back to the night-wind by the waterfall, And harmonized by the old choral wall : Others, that some original shape or form, power (Tho' less than that of Memnon's statue, warm In Egypt's rays, to harp at a fix'd 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, Amidst the court a gothic fountain play'd, Symmetrical, but deck'd with carving quaintStrange faces, like to men in masquerade, And here perhaps a monster, there a saint: The spring gush'd thro' 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. The mansion's self was vast and venerable, 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 unimpair'd, to decorate the scene; The rest had been reform’d, replac'd or sunk, And spoke more of the baron than the monk."* * Some very few copies, for “the Baron,” in this line, read “ the Colonel ;"! but this is a mistake. |