Page:Landon in Literary Gazette 1825.pdf/43

42 Literary Gazette, 1st October, 1825, Page 636-637

The young, the bright, the gay—the world is theirs; But Solitude was made for withered hearts, For memory, not hope. - - -

me now a dream is visible— The very solitude that I would chuse For mine own dwelling-place—in olden days It was a convent, and the vestal pale, Pale as the saint she worshipped, made the night Musical with her lonely orisons: 'Tis now in ruins; and the trembling walls Owe half their substance to the dark grey moss And ivy, which, as if in late remorse, Support the wreck they aided time to make. From the dim cloisters is no distant view; The girdling pines shut out the world around; There is no other noise than their old boughs Sweeping with a strange melancholy sound, like speech, But inarticulate as oracles In the mysterious and holy woods Of ancient days; and in their murmurings I'll fancy omens telling my own fate, Gloomy as their own voices are. There is A cell yet standing, which should be mine own, Where I would weep the midnight hours away: The ivy thro' the broken lattice bars Has stolen, as sorrow steals, and twined its leaves Over the walls, and let the dead ones fall On the stone floor—a drear, but fitting couch: It opens on the chapel. Yet is left In the old windows one or two rich panes— I would they were not there, the purple light Is too like Hope's, and I have done with hope. But there is one pane, amid broken ones, As if too beautiful to be destroyed, Bearing the impress of a maiden Saint—