Page:Beachy Head and Other Poems.pdf/131

Rh

The broken arch: or follows with his eye, The wall-creeper that hunts the burnish'd fly; Sees the newt basking in the sunny ray, Or snail that sinuous winds his shining way, O'er the time-fretted walls of Monica.

He comes not here, from the sepulchral stone To tear the oblivious pall that Time has thrown, But meditating, marks the power proceed From the mapped lichen, to the plumed weed, From thready mosses to the veined flower, The silent, slow, but ever active power Of Vegetative Life, that o'er Decay Weaves her green mantle, when returning May Dresses the ruins of Saint Monica.