A glorious remnant of the Gothic pile, While yet the church was Rome’s, stood half apart, In a grand arch, which once screened many an aisle. These last had disappeared--a loss to art; The first yet frowned superbly o’er the soil, And kindled feelings in the roughest heart, Which mourned the power of time’s or tempest’s march, In gazing on that venerable arch. Within a niche nigh to its pinnacle, Twelve saints had once stood sanctified in stone: And these had fallen, not when the friars fell, But in the war which struck Charles from his throne. * * * * * But in a higher niche, alone, but crowned, The Virgin Mother of the God-born Child, With her son in her blessed arms, looked round, Spared by some chance, when all beside was spoiled; She made the earth below seem holy ground. This may be superstition weak, or wild; But even the painted relics of a shrine Of any worship, wake some thoughts divine. A mighty window, hollow in the centre; Shorn of its glass of thousand colourings, Through which the deepened glories once could enter, Streaming from off the sun like seraph’s wings, Now yawns all desolate: now loud, now fainter, The gale sweeps through its fretwork; and oft sings The owl his anthem, where the silenced quire Lie with their hallelujahs quenched like fire. Amid the court a Gothic fountain played, Symmetrical, but decked with carvings quaint-- Strange faces, like to men in masquerade, And here, perhaps, a monster, there a saint: The spring gushed through grim mouths, of granite made, And sparkled into basins, where it spent Its little torrent in a thousand bubbles, Like man’s vain glory, and his vainer troubles. It was seeing how exactly all this was a copy of the original--how there stood the mighty window, shewing through it the garden and dog’s tomb--how the Virgin there still stood aloft with her child, distinct, bold, and beautiful--but the fountain was gone, that we could not help loudly expressing our regret. When the valet who attended us came to the inner court, “There,” he said, “you see is the fountain--it is all there, quite perfect.” “Yes, yes,” we could not help replying, “that is the very thing we are sorry for--its being all there. A man might cut off his nose, and put it in his pocket, and when any one wondered at his mutilated face, cry, ‘O, it is all here; I have it in my pocket.’ The mischief would be, that it was in the wrong place, and his face spoiled for ever.” To every visiter of taste, the abbey front must be thus injured whilst it and the poet’s description of it last together.