The Lady Of La Garaye - Prologue
RUINS! A charm is in the word:
It makes us smile, it makes us sigh,
'Tis like the note of some spring bird
Recalling other Springs gone by,
And other wood-notes which we heard
With some sweet face in some green lane,
And never can so hear again!
Ruins! They were not desolate
To us,--the ruins we remember:
Early we came and lingered late,
Through bright July, or rich September;
With young companions wild with glee,
We feasted 'neath some spreading tree--
And looked into their laughing eyes,
And mocked the echo for replies.
Oh! eyes--and smiles--and days of yore,
Can nothing your delight restore?
Return!
Return? In vain we listen;
Those voices have been lost to earth!
Our hearts may throb--our eyes may glisten,
They'll call no more in love or mirth.
For, like a child sent out to play,
Our youth hath had its holiday,
And silence deepens where we stand
Lone as in some foreign land,
Where our language is not spoken,
And none know our hearts are broken.
Ruins! How we loved them then!
How we loved the haunted glen
Which grey towers overlook,
Mirrored in the glassy brook.
How we dreamed,--and how we guessed,
Looking up, with earnest glances,
Where the black crow built its nest,
And we built our wild romances;
Tracing in the crumbled dwelling
Bygone tales of no one's telling!
This was the Chapel: that the stair:
Here, where all lies damp and bare,
The fragrant thurible was swung,
The silver lamp in beauty hung,
And in that mass of ivied shade
The pale nuns sang--the abbot prayed.
This was the Kitchen. Cold and blank
The huge hearth yawns; and wide and high
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poem by Caroline Elizabeth Sarah Norton
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