And still with little less than dread
On such the sight is riveted.
The roofless cot, decay'd and rent,
Will scarce delay the passer by;
The tower by war or tempest bent,
While yet may frown one battlement,
Demands and daunts the stranger's eye;
Each vied arch and pillar lone,
Pleads haughtily for glories gone!

"His floating robe around him folding,

Slow sweeps he through the column'd aisle ; With dread beheld, with gloom beholding

The rites that sanctify the pile.

But when the anthem shakes the choir,
And kneel the monks, his steps retire;
By yonder lone and wavering torch
His aspect glares within the porch;
There will he pause till all is done-
And hear the prayer, but utter none.
See-by the half-illumined wall
His hood fly back, his dark hair fall,
That pale brow wildly wreathing round,
As if the Gorgon there had bound
The sablest of the serpent-braid

That o'er her fearful forehead stray'd:

For he declines the convent oath,

And leaves those locks unhallow'd growth,

But wears our garb in all beside;

And, not from piety but pride,

Gives wealth to walls that never heard

Of his one holy vow nor word.

Lo!-mark ye, as the harmony
Peals louder praises to the sky,
That livid cheek, that stony air
Of mix'd defiance and despair!

Saint Francis, keep him from the shrine!
Else may we dread the wrath divine
Made manifest by awful sign.

If ever evil angel bore

The form of mortal, such he wore:

By all my hope of sins forgiven,

Such looks are not of earth nor heaven!"

To love the softest hearts are prone,
But such can ne'er be all his own;
Too timid in his woes to share,
Too meek to meet, or brave despair;
And sterner hearts alone may feel
The wound that time can never heal.

The rugged metal of the mine

Must burn before its surface shine,
But plunged within the furnace-flame,
It bends and melts-though still the same;
Then temper'd to thy want, or will,
'T will serve thee to defend or kill;

A breast-plate for thine hour of need,
Or blade to bid thy foeman bleed;
But if a dagger's form it bear,
Let those who shape its edge, beware!
Thus passion's fire, and woman's art,
Can turn and tame the sterner heart;
From these its form and tone are ta'en,
And what they make it, must remain,
But break-before it bend again.

If solitude succeed to grief,
Release from pain is slight relief;
The vacant bosom's wilderness

Might thank the pang that made it less.
We loathe what none are left to share:
Even bliss-'t were woe alone to bear;
The heart once left thus desolate
Must fly at last for ease--to hate.
It is as if the dead could feel
The icy worm around them steal,
And shudder, as the reptiles creep
To revel o'er their rotting sleep,
Without the power to scare away
The cold consumers of their clay!
It is as if the desert-bird, (39)

Whose beak unlocks her bosom's stream
To still her famish'd nestlings' scream,
Nor mourns a life to them transferr'd,
Should rend her rash devoted breast,
And find them flown her empty nest.
The keenest pangs the wretched find

Are rapture to the dreary void,
The leafless desert of the mind,

The waste of feelings unemploy'd.
Who would be doom'd to gaze upon
A sky without a cloud or sun?
Less hideous far the tempest's roar
Than ne'er to brave the billows more—
Thrown, when the war of winds is o'er,
A lonely wreck on fortune's shore,
'Mid sullen calm, and silent bay,
Unseen to drop by dull decay; -

"Father! thy days have pass'd in peace, 'Mid counted beads, and countless prayer; To bid the sins of others cease,

Thyself without a crime or care,

Save transient ills that all must bear,
Has been thy lot from youth to age;
And thou wilt bless thee from the rage

Of passions fierce and uncontroll'd,
Such as thy penitents unfold,

Whose secret sins and sorrows rest
Within thy pure and pitying breast.
My days, though few, have pass'd below
In much of joy, but more of woe;
Yet still in hours of love or strife,

I've 'scaped the weariness of life:

Now leagued with friends, now girt by foes,
I loathed the languor of repose.
Now nothing left to love or hate,
No more with hope or pride elate,
I'd rather be the thing that crawls
Most noxious o'er a dungeon's walls,
Than pass my dull, unvarying days,
Condemn'd to meditate and gaze.
Yet, lurks a wish within my breast
For rest-but not to feel 't is rest.
Soon shall my fate that wish fulfil;

And I shall sleep without the dream
Of what I was, and would be still,

Dark as to thee my deeds may seem:
My memory now is but the tomb

Of joys long dead; my hope, their doom:
Though better to have died with those
Than bear a life of lingering woes.
My spirit shrunk not to sustain
The searching throes of ceaseless pain;
Nor sought the self-accorded grave
Of ancient fool and modern knave:
Yet death I have not fear'd to meet;
And in the field it had been sweet,