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Gaze on the Abbey’s ruined pile:
Does not the succoring ivy, keeping
Her watch around it, seem to smile,
As o’er a loved one sleeping?
One solitary turret gray
Still tells, in melancholy glory,
The legend of the Cheviot day,
The Percy’s proudest border story.
That day its roof was triumph’s arch;
Then rang, from aisle to pictured dome,
The light step of the soldier’s march,
The music of the trump and drum;
And babe, and sire, the old, the young,
And the monk’s hymn, and minstrel’s song,
And woman’s pure kiss, sweet and long,
Welcomed her warrior home.

Wild roses by the Abbey towers
Are gay in their young bud and bloom:
They were born of a race of funeral-flowers
That garlanded, in long-gone hours,
A templar’s knightly tomb.
He died, the sword in his mailed hand,
On the holiest spot of the Blessed land,
Where the Cross was damped with his dying breath,
When blood ran free as festal wine,
And the sainted air of Palestine
Was thick with the darts of death.