| |
| IT was not when the sun through the glittering sky, | |
| In summer’s joyful majesty, | |
| Looked from his cloudless height;— | |
| It was not when the sun was sinking down, | |
| And tingeing the ruin’s mossy brown | 5 |
| With gleams of ruddy light;— | |
| Nor yet when the moon, like a pilgrim fair, | |
| Mid star and planet journeyed slow, | |
| And, mellowing the stillness of the air, | |
| Smiled on the world below; | 10 |
| That, Melrose! mid thy mouldering pride, | |
| All breathless and alone, | |
| I grasped the dreams to day denied, | |
| High dreams of ages gone!— | |
| Had unshrieved guilt for one moment been there, | 15 |
| His heart had turned to stone! | |
| For oft, though felt no moving gale, | |
| Like restless ghost in glimmering shroud, | |
| Through the lofty oriel opening pale, | |
| Was seen the hurrying cloud; | 20 |
| And, at doubtful distance, each broken wall | |
| Frowned black as bier’s mysterious pall | |
| From mountain-cave beheld by ghastly seer; | |
| It seemed as if sound had ceased to be; | |
| Nor dust from arch nor leaf from tree | 25 |
| Relieved the noiseless ear. | |
| The owl had sailed from her silent tower, | |
| Tweed hushed his weary wave, | |
| The time was midnight’s moonless hour, | |
| My seat a dreaded Douglas’ grave! | 30 |
| My being was sublimed by joy, | |
| My heart was big, yet I could not weep; | |
| I felt that God would ne’er destroy | |
| The mighty in their tranced sleep. | |
| Within the pile no common dead | 35 |
| Lay blended with their kindred mould; | |
| Theirs were the hearts that prayed, or bled, | |
| In cloister dim, on death-plain red, | |
| The pious and the bold. | |
| There slept the saint whose holy strains | 40 |
| Brought seraphs round the dying bed; | |
| And there the warrior, who to chains | |
| Ne’er stooped his crested head. | |
| I felt my spirit sink or swell | |
| With patriot rage or lowly fear, | 45 |
| As battle-trump, or convent-bell, | |
| Rung in my tranced ear. | |
| But dreams prevailed of loftier mood, | |
| When stern beneath the chancel high | |
| My country’s spectre-monarch stood, | 50 |
| All sheathed in glittering panoply; | |
| Then I thought with pride what noble blood | |
| Had flowed for the hills of liberty. | |
| High the resolves that fill the brain | |
| With transports trembling upon pain, | 55 |
| When the veil of time is rent in twain, | |
| That hides the glory past! | |
| The scene may fade that gave them birth, | |
| But they perish not with the perishing earth, | |
| Forever shall they last. | 60 |
| And higher, I ween, is that mystic might | |
| That comes to the soul from the silent night, | |
| When she walks, like a disembodied spirit, | |
| Through realms her sister shades inherit, | |
| And soft as the breath of those blessed flowers | 65 |
| That smile in Heaven’s unfading bowers, | |
| With love and awe, a voice she hears | |
| Murmuring assurance of immortal years. | |
| In hours of loneliness and woe, | |
| Which even the best and wisest know, | 70 |
| How leaps the lightened heart to seize | |
| On the bliss that comes with dreams like these! * * * * * | |
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