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the flaunting banners of other days;—and the noisy jack-daws and downy, spectre-like owls, are the only disturbers of the utter silence, where formerly
Knights and dames in bower and hall
Held stately sport and festival.
Or where the solemn chant of the mass, and the far-heard vesper-bell told that many a "Friar of orders grey" there bent in "prayer and penance oft."
In no place or season can the triumph of nature over art be so vividly expressed. The proud fabric of man's ambition, toil, and ingenuity, totters and decays; while the frailest of Nature's works, the delicate flower, whose individual life is but a day, springs, ever renewed, in undiminished vigour.
I remember, where the bosomy hills
Lie, spreading in their fertile gladness round
A massive buttressed pile of other days,
That now in age is mould'ring: while the hills,
The ancient hills, which saw that Abbey rise
In its first youthful grandeur from the earth,
And still have looked upon it, year by year,
Are still as brightly verdant—still as rich
In the full time of harvest—still as young,
When Spring's light finger wreaths their lofty brows
With her sweet, gem-like flowers,—as when at first,
In their slow-growing infancy, those towers
Caught the fair sunlight on their unrent sides.
So while Art's noblest works are born and die,
Nature's renewèd youth outlasteth all.
