EMBLEM of strength, which time hath quite subdued, Scarcely on thy green mount the eye may trace Those girding walls which made thee once a place Of succour, in old days of deadly feud.
Yes! thou wert once the Scotch marauder's dread; And vainly did the Roxburgh shafts assail
Thy moated towers, from which they fell like hail;
While waved Northumbria's pennon o'er thy head.1
Thou wert the work of man, and so hast pass'd
Like those who piled thee; but the features still
Of steadfast Nature all unchanged remain ;
Still Cheviot listens to the northern blast,
And the blue Tweed winds murmuring round thy hill;
While Carham whispers of the slaughter'd Dane.2
BENEATH, Tweed murmur'd 'mid the forests green:
And through thy beech-tree and laburnum boughs,
A solemn ruin, lovely in repose,
Dryburgh! thine ivy'd walls were greyly seen :
Thy court is now a garden, where the flowers
Expand in silent beauty, and the bird,
Flitting from arch to arch, alone is heard
To cheer with song the melancholy bowers.
Yet did a solemn pleasure fill the soul,
As through thy shadowy cloistral cells we trode,
To think, hoar pile! that once thou wert the abode
Of men, who could to solitude control
Their hopes-yea! from Ambition's pathways stole,
To give their whole lives blamelessly to God! 3
SUMMER was on thee-the meridian light,
And, as we wander'd through thy column'd aisles,
Deck'd all thy hoar magnificence with smiles,
Making the rugged soft, the gloomy bright.
Nor was reflection from us far apart,
As clomb our steps thy lone and lofty stair,
Till, gain'd the summit, tick'd in silent air
Thine ancient clock, as 'twere thy throbbing heart.
Monastic grandeur and baronial pride
Subdued the former half, the latter quite,
Pile of king David! to thine altar's site,
Full many a footstep guides, and long shall guide; Where they repose, who met not, save in fight— And Douglas sleeps with Evers, side by side!
THE calm of evening o'er the dark pine-wood
Lay with an aureate glow, as we explored
Thy classic precincts, hallow'd Abbotsford!
And at thy porch in admiration stood :
We felt thou wert the work, th' abode of Him
Whose fame hath shed a lustre on our age,
The mightiest of the mighty!-o'er whose page
Thousands shall hang, until Time's eye grow dim;
And then we thought, when shall have pass'd away
The millions now pursuing life's career,
And Scott himself is dust, how, lingering here,
Pilgrims from all the lands of earth shall stray
Amid thy cherish'd ruins, and survey
The scenes around, with reverential fear! 5
STERN, rugged pile! thy scowl recalls the days
Of foray and of feud, when, long ago,
Homes were thought worthy of reproach or praise
Only as yielding safeguards from the foe:
Over thy gateways the armorial arms
Proclaim of doughty Douglases, who held
Thy towers against the foe, and thence repell'd
Oft, after efforts vain, invasion's harms.
Eve dimm'd the hills, as, by the Tweed below,
We sat where once thy blossomy orchards smiled,
And yet where many an apple-tree grows wild,
Listening the blackbird, and the river's flow;
While, high between us and the sunset glow,
Thy giant walls seem'd picturesquely piled."
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