Let this rough fragment lend its mossy seat;
Let Contemplation hail this lone retreat:
Come, meek-eyed goddess, through the midnight gloom,
Born of the silent awe which robes the tomb!
This gothic front, this antiquated pile,
The bleak wind howling through each mazy aisle;
Its high gray towers, faint peeping through the shade,
Shall hail thy presence, consecrated maid!
Whether beneath some vaulted abbey's dome,
Where ev'ry footstep sounds in every tomb;
Where Superstition, from the marble stone,
Gives every sound, a pilgrim-spirit's groan:
Pensive thou readest by the moon's full glare
The sculptured children of Affection's tear;
Or in the church-yard lone thou sitt'st to weep
O'er some sad wreck, beneath the tufty heap--
Perchance some victim to Seduction's spell,
Who yielded, wept, and then neglected fell!
But hither come, on yon swoln arch to gaze,
And view the vivid flash eruptive blare;
Light those high walls with transitory gleam,
Illume the air, and sparkle in the stream.
Ah! look, where yonder tempest-shaken cloud,
Awful and black as the chaosian shroud,
Breaks, like the waves which lash the sandy shore,
And speaks its mission in a feeble row.
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