Classic Poem

I.

Thou fragment huge of hoar antiquity!
?Imagination kindles as I view
Thy rugged battlements;—sure nought can be
?So fit to waken dreams, old, fine, and true,
Of the evanished age of chivalry!
?Unbowed, although the storms of ages threw
Their desolation round thee, thou hast smiled
On time's vast changes and on tempests wild.
II.

Unconquered pile! that speakest of the past
?With a majestic, though a silent power,
Why stand'st thou not amid some desert vast,
?Whose gloomy wildness might around thee lour,
And a congenial cloud upon thee cast?
?Why stand'st thou with the pigmies of an hour?
Those towers that with such lofty scorn look, down,
Should grace a solitude—not mock a town.
III.

It is not meet that thou amidst the might
?Of all that would illumine loneliness—
Full of the recollections which excite
?Warrior, historian, bard, and all who press
Out of the “ignorant present,” and whose right
?To the high honours fadeless things possess,
And justly ask of all, none dare gainsay—
Should'st dwell amidst the frivolous and gay.
IV.

We should pass from the world to thee, not find
?Thy grandeur circled by ignoble things—
Enough of this. Still to the heart and mind
?Thy aspect a sufficing feeling brings:
Thou art in reverential awe enshrined,
?And to thy meanest stone a glory clings;—
And gloriously past times and things shall live,
Whilst thou remain'st their representative.
V.

It were a schoolboy's task to tell of all
?The recollections which thou dost excite—
Of pride's high soaring, or its lowly fall—
?Of superstition and its gloomy night—
Of startling changes—of the rise and fall
?Of kings—of struggling worth and haughty might:
'Twere childish moralizing too to say,
That thou art here, and these have passed away.
VI.

Yet these things, as I stand within thee, claim
?The homage of the mind, the meed of thought;
'Tis these that form thy interest and thy fame,
?With these associations thou art fraught.
Still dost thou calmly teach mankind this same
?Harsh lesson, that, however fondly sought,
All earthly things we seek, all things we trust,
Or fly our grasp, or triumph o'er our dust.
VII.

Leathwick! this simple lay I offer thee—
?A lay too hastily and feebly traced,
Would it were worthier proffered thus to be!
?Would it were with those brilliant beauties graced
Which are the marks of genuine poesy,
?Fearless before thee might it then be placed.
And with a proud humility might claim
Thy friendly smile, nor ask for higher fame.