Page:Halleck.djvu/39

Rh Gaze on the Abbey’s ruined pile:
 * Does not the succoring ivy, keeping

Her watch around it, seem to smile,
 * As o’er a loved one sleeping?

One solitary turret gray
 * Still tells, in melancholy glory,

The legend of the Cheviot day,
 * The Percy’s proudest border story.

That day its roof was triumph’s arch;
 * Then rang, from aisle to pictured dome,

The light step of the soldier’s march,
 * The music of the trump and drum;

And babe, and sire, the old, the young, And the monk’s hymn, and minstrel’s song, And woman’s pure kiss, sweet and long,
 * Welcomed her warrior home.

Wild roses by the Abbey towers
 * Are gay in their young bud and bloom:

They were born of a race of funeral-flowers That garlanded, in long-gone hours,
 * A templar’s knightly tomb.

He died, the sword in his mailed hand, On the holiest spot of the Blessed land,
 * Where the Cross was damped with his dying breath,

When blood ran free as festal wine, And the sainted air of Palestine
 * Was thick with the darts of death.