On to Iona!--What can she afford To _us_ save matter for a thoughtful sigh, Heaved over ruin with stability In urgent contrast? To diffuse the WORD (Thy Paramount, mighty Nature! and Time's Lord) Her Temples rose,[912] 'mid pagan gloom; but why, 6 Even for a moment, has our verse deplored Their wrongs, since they fulfilled their destiny? And when, subjected to a common doom Of mutability, those far-famed Piles 10 Shall disappear from both the sister Isles, Iona's Saints, forgetting not past days, Garlands shall wear of amaranthine bloom, While heaven's vast sea of voices chants their praise. FOOTNOTES: [912] St. Columba took up his residence at Iona, in 563.--ED. XXXIII IONA (UPON LANDING) How sad a welcome! To each voyager[913] Some ragged child holds up for sale a store[914] Of wave-worn pebbles, pleading on the shore[915] Where once came monk and nun with gentle stir, Blessings to give, news ask, or suit prefer. 5 Yet is[916] yon neat trim church[917] a grateful speck Of novelty amid the sacred wreck Strewn far and wide. Think, proud Philosopher![918] Fallen though she be, this Glory of the west,[919] Still on her sons, the beams of mercy shine; 10 And "hopes, perhaps more heavenly bright than thine, A grace by thee unsought and unpossest, A faith more fixed, a rapture more divine, Shall gild their passage to eternal rest."[920] FOOTNOTES: [913] 1837. With earnest look, to every voyager, 1835. [914] 1837. ... his store 1835. [915] 1835. With outstretched hands, round every voyager Press ragged children, each to supplicate A price for wave-worn pebbles on his plate, MS. [916] 1837. But see ... 1835. [917] This refers to the modern parish Church on the Island, not to St. Oran's Chapel, or the Cathedral Church of St. Mary.--ED. [918] 1837. ... this sacred wreck-- Nay spare thy scorn, haughty Philosopher! 1835. [919] 1835. Fallen as she is, this Glory of the West, MS. [920] The four last lines of this sonnet are adopted from a well-known sonnet of Russel, as conveying my feeling[921] better than any words of my own[922] could do.--W. W. 1835. These "last four lines" are taken from sonnet No. x. of _Sonnets and_ _Miscellaneous Poems_, by the late Thomas Russel, Fellow of New College Oxford, printed for D. Price and J. Cooke, 1789. The Rev. Thomas Russell, author of these _Sonnets_, was born 1762, died 1788. He was a Wykehamist, and is referred to in a letter by Wordsworth to Dyce in 1833.--ED. [921] 1845 the author's feeling 1835. [922] 1845 his own 1835. XXXIV THE BLACK STONES OF IONA