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To want, and pining misery dear,
And loved by all the country near,
When, as successive ages rolled,
The steel-clad knight, or baron bold,
In arms, and well-fought fields grown gray,
Here calmly closed life's parting day.
For heroes, here their eyes have closed,
And statesmen from their toils reposed;
And sages, won by nature's charms,
Have wooed her to their longing arms;
And poets, here have struck the lyre—
And caught the soul-inflaming fire,
Which, as it thrilled their nerves along,
And woke the hidden powers of song,
To distant times again addrest,
Shall raise the mind, and warm the breast.

Now sinks the fading orb of night,
The stars withdraw their twinkling l igh
And seem in fancy's ear to say,
We too are fated to decay.

O thou! Almighty Power Supreme!
Whose bounty gives this nightly beam,
Who pourest on the wondering soul,
This boundless blaze from pole to pole—
Though hid from my imploring eye,
Thy works declare thee ever nigh.
O teach me clearly to conceive,
O teach me firmly to believe,
That, from this wreck of mortal things,
To which our sense so fondly clings,
That, from this dark, bewildered state,
Entangled in the maze of fate,