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I. HOW sweet that valley, clothed in freshest green, | |
| With its neat city! whose white shining walls | |
| And village-like circumference scarce recalls | |
| The form of any city we have seen, | |
| But looks like some small picture, so serene | 5 |
| And still it lies! But hark! the convent-bell! | |
| What strange emotions in the bosom swell! | |
| And fair before, now doubly fair the scene. | |
| Such magic ’s in a sound. The mind is stored | |
| With images, requiring but a stroke, | 10 |
| Or gentlest touch, to vibrate at each chord, | |
| And pleasurable feelings to evoke: | |
| It is a prism, whose hues are undisclosed | |
| Till acted on, and to its sun exposed. | |
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II. OUR sweetest musings are delusions oft, | 15 |
| As baseless as night dreams, or as the bow, | |
| Spanning the heavens, which from afar a glow | |
| Of beauty seems, radiant, at once, and soft, | |
| Meet path for spirits when they pass aloft, | |
| But aerial and unreal. To my young mind, | 20 |
| A convent brought up images refined | |
| And beautiful, till, standing ’neath their loft, | |
| I heard the sisters, gazing on the wall, | |
| Repeat and re-repeat their weary drawl, | |
| Which the damp vaults cast back as if in scorn; | 25 |
| And learned that prayers ceased not, nor night nor day, | |
| Nor had for ages; when I turned away, | |
| Lamenting over creatures so forlorn. | |
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