More with these dinners than the killed or wounded;—
LIV
As thus: “On Thursday there was a grand dinner;
Present, Lords A.B.C.”—Earls, dukes, by name
Announced with no less pomp than Victory’s winner:
Then underneath, and in the very same
Column: date, “Falmouth. There has lately been here
The Slap-dash regiment, so well known to Fame,
Whose loss in the late action we regret:
The vacancies are filled up—see Gazette.”
LV
To Norman Abbey1010 whirled the noble pair—
An old, old Monastery once, and now
Still older mansion—of a rich and rare
Mixed Gothic, such as artists all allow
Few specimens yet left us can compare
Withal: it lies, perhaps, a little low,
Because the monks preferred a hill behind,
To shelter their devotion from the wind.
LVI
It stood embosomed in a happy valley,
Crowned by high woodlands, where the Druid oak1011
Stood like Caractacus, in act to rally
His host, with broad arms ’gainst the thunder-stroke;
And from beneath his boughs were seen to sally
The dappled foresters; as Day awoke,
The branching stag swept down with all his herd,
To quaff a brook which murmured like a bird.
LVII
Before the mansion lay a lucid Lake,1012
Broad as transparent, deep, and freshly fed
By a river, which its softened way did take
In currents through the calmer water spread
Around: the wildfowl nestled in the brake
And sedges, brooding in their liquid bed:
The woods1013 sloped downwards to its brink, and stood
With their green faces fixed upon the flood.
LVIII
Its outlet dashed into a deep cascade,
Sparkling with foam, until again subsiding,
Its shriller echoes—like an infant made1014
Quiet—sank into softer ripples, gliding
Into a rivulet; and thus allayed,
Pursued its course, now gleaming, and now hiding
Its windings through the woods; now clear, now blue,
According as the skies their shadows threw.
LIX
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.1015
LX
Within a niche, nigh to its pinnacle,
Twelve Saints had once stood sanctified in stone;
But these had fallen, not when the friars fell,
But in the war which struck Charles from his throne,
When each house was a fortalice—as tell
The annals of full many a line undone—
The gallant Cavaliers,1016 who fought in vain
For those who knew not to resign or reign.
LXI
But in a higher niche, alone, but crowned,
The Virgin-Mother of the God-born Child,
With her Son in her blessèd 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 faintest relics of a shrine
Of any worship wake some thoughts divine.
LXII
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 choir
Lie with their Hallelujahs quenched like fire.
LXIII
But in the noontide of the moon, and when1017
The wind is wingèd from one point of heaven,
There moans a strange unearthly sound, which then
Is musical—a dying accent driven
Through the huge Arch, which soars and sinks again.
Some deem it but the distant echo given
Back to the night wind by the waterfall,
And harmonised by the old choral wall:
LXIV
Others, that some original shape, or form
Shaped by decay perchance, hath given the power
(Though less than that of Memnon’s statue,1018 warm
In Egypt’s rays, to harp at a fixed hour)
To this grey ruin: with a voice to charm,
Sad, but serene, it sweeps o’er tree or tower;
The cause I know not, nor can solve; but such
The fact:—I’ve heard it—once perhaps too much.1019
LXV
Amidst 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.
LXVI
The Mansion’s self was vast and venerable,
With more of the monastic than has been
Elsewhere preserved: the cloisters still were stable,
The cells, too, and Refectory, I ween:
An exquisite small chapel had been able,
Still unimpaired, to decorate the scene;
The rest had been reformed, replaced, or sunk,
And spoke more of the baron than the monk.
LXVII
Huge halls, long galleries, spacious chambers, joined
By no quite lawful marriage of the arts,
Might shock a connoisseur; but when combined,
Formed a whole which, irregular in parts,
Yet left a grand impression on the mind,
At least of those whose eyes are in their hearts:
We gaze upon a giant for his stature,
Nor judge at first if all be true to nature.
LXVIII
Steel Barons, molten the next generation
To silken rows of gay and gartered Earls,
Glanced from the walls in goodly preservation:
And Lady Marys blooming into girls,
With fair long locks, had also kept their station:
And Countesses mature in robes and pearls:
Also some beauties of Sir Peter Lely,
Whose drapery hints we may admire them freely.
LXIX
Judges in very formidable ermine
Were there, with brows that did not much invite
The accused to think their lordships would determine
His cause by leaning much from might to right:
Bishops, who had not left a single sermon;
Attorneys-general, awful to the sight,
As hinting more (unless our judgments warp us)
Of the “Star Chamber” than of “Habeas Corpus.”
LXX
Generals, some all in armour, of the old
