<g>Lines to a Cistercian Monastery.</g> ‘Here man more purely lives, less oft doth fall, More promptly rises, walks with nicer heed, More safely rests, dies happier; is freed Earlier from cleansing fires, and gains withal A brighter crown.’ On yon <g>Cistercian</g> wall _That_ confident assurance may be read; And, to like shelter, from the world have fled Increasing multitudes. The potent call Doubtless shall cheat full oft the heart’s desire; Yet, while the rugged age on pliant knee Vows to rapt Fancy humble fealty, A gentler life spreads round the holy spires; Where’er they rise the sylvan waste retires, And aëry harvests crown the fertile lea. <g>Tinterne Abbey on the Wye.</g> Sudden the change; at once to tread The grass-grown mansions of the dead. Awful to feeling, where, immense, Rose ruin’d grey magnificence; The fair wrought shaft all ivy-bound, The tow’ring arch with foliage crowned, That trembles on its brow sublime, Triumphant o’er the spoils of time. There, grasping all the eye beheld, Thought into mingling anguish swell’d, And checked the wild excursive wing, O’er dust or bones of priest or king; Or rais’d some <g>Strongbow</g> warrior’s ghost, To shout before his banner’d host. But all was still. The chequered floor Shall echo to the step no more; No airy roof the strain prolong, Of vesper chant or choral song-- <g>Tinterne</g>! thy name shall hence sustain A thousand raptures in my brain; Joys, full of soul, all strength, all eye, That cannot fade, that cannot die.--_Bloomfield._ <g>Evening at Tinterne Abbey.</g> <g>A pilgrim</g>, at the vesper hour, I stood by Tinterne’s hallowed tower; While o’er the walls, in golden hue, The setting sun its farewell threw; Then, paling slowly, flushed and fled, Like a smile from the cheek of the recent dead. * * * * * <g>’Tis night</g>--on the ivy-mantled walls The shadows deepen, and darkness falls; And forth from his roost, in the fretted aisle, The solemn owl wheels round the pile; But no lighted shrine, no vesper-song, Is seen, or heard, these aisles among; For hymnless now the day returns, And voiceless sets on their nameless urns; Nor laud, nor chant, nor matin chime, Retard the fleeting steps of time. * * * * * <g>The Shrine</g>, from which the anthem rushed, When evening glowed, or morning blushed, Like them, who reared the pile on high-- A landmark pointing to the sky; Like them, by slow and sure decay, That shrine is crumbling o’er their clay.--_W.B._, 1848. <g>The Abbey by Moonlight.</g>