NETLEY ABBEY.

"And while, to neighbouring waves, the unwonted show, Each parting bough and opening glade reveals,

The awe-struck sailor checks the hastening prow,
Suspends his oar, and wonders what he feels.—

"Thus musing, oft I pace the moss-grown isle,

Each low-brow'd vault, each dark recess explore; While the bleak wind howls through the shatter'd pile, Or wave hoarse-murmuring breaks along the shore.

"No other sounds, amid these arches heard,
The death-like silence of their gloom molest,
Save the shrill plaints of some unsocial bird,
That seeks the house of solitude to rest.

"Save when their tinkling leaders, to the shade Of these cool grots, invite the fleecy folds, Whereof the sated ox, supinely laid,

With lowing herds a distant converse holds !

"Or where the Gothic pillar's slender form

(Unequal to the incumbent quarry's weight) Deserts its post, and reeling to the storm,

With sullen crash resigns its charge to Fate.

"While the self-planted oak, within confined (Auxiliar to the tempest's wild uproar),

Its giant branches fluctuates to the wind,

And rends the wall whose aid it courts no more.

NETLEY ABBEY,

Mute is the matin bell, whose early call
Warn'd the grey fathers from their humble beds ;
No midnight taper gleams along the wall,

Or round the sculptured saint its radiance sheds !

"No martyr's shrine its high-wrought gold displays,
To bid the wondering zealot hither roam;

No relic here the pilgrim's toil o'erpays,
And cheers his footsteps to a distant home!"

"The pleasing melancholy inspired by contemplating the mouldering towers and ivy-mantled walls of ancient buildings, is universally felt and acknowledged by observers of every sort and disposition: but these scenes receive a double solemnity when the remains are of a religious kind, such as churches and monasteries.

"In considering a decayed palace or ruined castle, we recollect that it was the seat of some great lord or warlike baron, and recur to the history of the gallant actions which have been achieved on that spot, or are led to reflect on the uncertainty of all human grandeur, both perhaps from the fate of its lordly owner, and its own tottering state but these are subjects which are like to affect the generality of beholders but very slightly: persons in the middling walk of life, happily for them, being almost excluded from those violent convulsions and sud

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