Elegy on Newstead Abbey
Newstead! fast-falling, once-resplendent dome!
Religion’s shrine! repentant HENRY’s pride!
Of warriors, monks, and dames the cloister’d tomb,
Whose pensive shades around thy ruins glide,
Hail to thy pile! more honour’d in thy fall
Than modern mansions in their pillar’d state;
Proudly majestic frowns thy vaulted hall,
Scowling defiance on the blasts of fate.
No mail-clad serfs, obedient to their lord,
In grim array the crimson cross demand;
Or gay assemble round the festive board
Their chief’s retainers, an immortal band:
Else might inspiting Fancy’s magic eye
Retrace their progress through the lapse of time,
Marking each ardent youth, ordaln’d to die,
A votive pilgrim in Judea’s clime.
But not from thee, dark pile! departs the chief;
His feudal realm in other regions lay:
In thee the wounded conscience courts relief,
Retiring from the garish blare of day.
Yes! in thy gloomy cells and shades profound
The monk abjured a world he ne’er could view;
Or blood-stain’d guilt repenting solace found,
Or innocence from stern oppression flew.
A monarch bade thee from that wild arise,
Where Sherwood’s outlaws once were wont to prowl;
And Superstition’s crimes, of various dyes,
Sought shelter in the priest’s protecting cowl.
Where now the grass exhales a murky dew,
The humid pail of life-extinguish’d clay,
In sainted fame the sacred fathers grew,
Nor raised their pious voices but to pray.
Where now the bats their wavering wings extend
Soon as the gloaming spreads her waning shade,
The choir did oft their mingling vespers blend,
Or matin orisons to Mary pald.
Years roll on years; to ages, ages yield;
Abbots to abbots, in a line, succeed;
Religion’s charter their protecting shield,
Till royal sacrilege their doom decreed,
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poem by Byron (1807)
Added by Veronica Serbanoiu
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