Classic Poem

Rich wreck — proud relic of the days gone by!
Who can behold with unimpassioned eye
Thy meanest stone — nor feel his thoughts o'ercast
By a sweet, serious feeling of the past?
What heart without a quickening of its powers
Could find itself within thy hoary towers?
Our minds, not wholly fettered by to-day ,
With reverence bend, and fondly own thy sway.
For me — I stood where ancient revelry
Once poured her boisterous joy, till I could see
(With fancy's eye-sight, sight divinely true,
When glowing feeling guides the anxious view)
The bowl high-lifted, pledged to beauty's power,
By chiefs whose valour lit the festive hour,
And rapt and thrilling, listened while around
Swelled mirthful minstrelsy's delightful sound.

I stood within the lone confessional
Till I in fancy, saw the victim fall
Prone in contrition. I ascended high
(Bidding each uncongenial feeling fly)
Where erst the warder paced with anxious breast
When danger dwelt around, and wild unrest,
Until imagination-flushed, my soul
Could hear the clangors of the war-trump roll —
Could view the crested plume heave loftily,
While rose the cry of death, or shout of victory!

I turned: — the wild, the warlike scene had flown,
And thou wert standing — ruined and alone,
Yet with a majesty that never shrines
The temple where less antique beauty shines:
There was no voice, except our own, to wake
Thy echoes; but too oft there comes, to make
Thine ivied towers to their foundations shake;
With keen and ceaseless hate, the forceful blast,
And what long years might spare the tempest doth lay waste.