POOR, paltry slaves! yet born midst noblest
Why, Nature, waste thy wonders on such men?
Lo! Cintra's glorious Eden intervenes
In variegated maze of mount and glen.
Ah me! what hand can pencil guide, or pen, To follow half on which the eye dilates Through views more dazzling unto mortal ken Than those whereof such things the bard relates, Who to the awestruck world unlocked Elysium's gates?
The horrid crags, by toppling convent crowned,
The cork-trees hoar that clothe the shaggy steep,
The mountain moss by scorching skies imbrowned,
The sunken glen, whose sunless shrubs must weep,
The tender azure of the unruffled deep,
The orange tints that gild the greenest bough,
The torrents that from cliff to valley leap,
The vine on high, the willow branch below,
Mixed in one mighty scene, with varied beauty glow.
Then slowly climb the many-winding way,
And frequent turn to linger as you go,
From loftier rocks new loveliness survey,
And rest ye at "Our Lady's House of Woe";
Where frugal monks their little relics show,
And sundry legends to the stranger tell:
Here impious men have punished been; and lo,
Deep in yon cave Honorius long did dwell,
In hope to merit heaven by making earth a hell.
And here and there, as up the crags you spring, Mark many rude-carved crosses near the path; Yet deem not these devotion's offering,
These are memorials frail of murderous wrath: For wheresoe'er the shrieking victim hath Poured forth his blood beneath the assassin's knife, Some hand erects a cross of mouldering lath; And grove and glen with thousand such are rife Throughout this purple land, where law secures not life!
On sloping mounds, or in the vale beneath,
Are domes where whilome kings did make repair;
But now the wild-flowers round them only breathe:
Yet ruined splendor still is lingering there,
And yonder towers the Prince's palace fair:
There thou, too, Vathek! England's wealthiest son,
Once formed thy Paradise, as not aware,
When wanton Wealth her mightiest deeds hath done, Meek Peace voluptuous lures was ever wont to shun.
Here didst thou dwell, here schemes of pleasure plan,
Beneath yon mountain's ever beauteous brow;
But now, as if a thing unblest by man,
Thy fairy dwelling is as lone as thou!
Here giant weeds a passage scarce allow
To halls deserted, portals gaping wide: Fresh lessons to the thinking bosom, how Vain are the pleasaunces on earth supplied; Swept into wrecks anon by Time's ungentle tide.
INSCRIPTION FOR THE CELL OF HONORIUS, AT THE CORK CONVENT, NEAR CINTRA.
ERE, caverned like a beast, Honorius passed,
In self-affliction, solitude, and prayer,
Long years of penance. He had rooted out
All human feelings from his heart, and fled
With fear and loathing from all human joys.
Not thus in making known his will divine
Hath Christ enjoined. To aid the fatherless,
Comfort the sick, and be the poor man's friend,
And in the wounded heart pour gospel-balm,
These are the injunctions of his holy law,
Which whoso keeps shall have a joy on earth,
Calm, constant, still increasing, preluding
The eternal bliss of heaven. Yet mock not thou,
Stranger, the anchorite's mistaken zeal!
He painfully his painful duties kept,
Sincere, though erring. Stranger! do thou keep
Thy better and thine casier rule as well.
COONDAY languors of summer-tide
Voluptuous hang on Cintra's side,
Luxuries of languor, deep
And rich as a dream 'twixt wake and sleep;
Over all a delicious drowse,
As seen in an opium-eater's vision,
Goddesses, with slumberous brows
Beautiful, droop in bowers elysian;
All adown the mountain's side
A hazy sunshine mantling wide,
And the golden quiet gentliest falls
Round Montserrat's deserted halls.
Lo! the ruin, the site romantic!
Wanderer o'er the broad Atlantic,
Sick at heart of the restless ocean
That rolled thee hither, thou deemest hell
To be a whirlpool of driving motion,
Motion incessant and forced and frantic,
As Vathek did; and thou as well
Wouldst choose in so sweet a place to dwell;
A haven for the stormy-stressed,
Where all that blooms, that breathes, seems blest
With the fulness of a heavenly rest.
Yet a shadow haunts the ruin lone,
And voices are echoing mournfully;
This the burden of their moan:
Vanity! All is vanity!
I wander about the grassy knoll,
Whereon the crumbling mansions stand;
And, O, the scene that the site commands
Might charm the least enthusiast soul!
Smoothed from the door is a sunny slope,
Changeful as the kaleidoscope
With wild-flowers, which so gayly flaunt
That the green is not predominant,
For a young child's fall in a butterfly-chase
Smoothed even to the mountain's base.
And thence away to the eastward roll
In light and shadow the sea-like hills;
And a kingdom's breadth the vision fills.
Then, turning, I see above the browned
Bald mountain's forehead, with turrets crowned,
Where topples ever, our eyes to mock,
The House of Our Lady of the Rock,
All soft with a color of amethyst
Through lazy up-coilings of long-drawn mist;
A mist whose moisture is dropped again
In myriad threads of waterfall
Down sunny valley and sunless glen;
And I hear the descent all musical
With silvery tinklings. From the frown
Of a blue-green gulféd gorge, behind
The mansion's site, bursts, vast and white,
One torrent, in large flakes snowing adown,
With a mellow yet hollow roar rolled on the wind, Treble and base in harmony,
A chorus of waters, and breathlessly
Hang all things charmed on the lullaby.
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