IF

ROKEBY.

CANTO SIXTH.

ROKEBY.

CANTO SIXTH.

I.

THE summer sun, whose early power
Was wont to gild Matilda's bower,
And rouse her with his matin ray
Her duteous orisons to pay,

1

That morning sun has three times seen
The flowers unfold on Rokeby green,

But sees no more the slumbers fly
From fair Matilda's hazel eye;

That morning sun has three times broke
On Rokeby's glades of elm and oak,
But, rising from their sylvan screen,
Marks no grey turrets' glance between.
A shapeless mass lie keep and tower,
That, hissing to the morning shower,
Can but with smouldering vapour pay
The early smile of summer day.

The peasant, to his labour bound,
Pauses to view the blacken'd mound,
Striving, amid the ruin'd space,

Each well-remember'd spot to trace.
That length of frail and fire-scorch'd wall
Once screen'd the hospitable hall;
When yonder broken arch was whole,
'Twas there was dealt the weekly dole;
And where yon tottering columns nod,.
The chapel sent the hymn to God.-
So flits the world's uncertain span !
Nor zeal for God, nor love for man,
Gives mortal monuments a date
Beyond the

power of Time and Fate.

The towers must share the builder's doom;

Ruin is theirs, and his a tomb:

But better boon benignant Heaven

To Faith and Charity has given,

And bids the Christian hope sublime

Transcend the bounds of Fate and Time.1

II.

Now the third night of summer came,
Since that which witness'd Rokeby's flame.

1 [MS." And bids our hopes ascend sublime
Beyond the bounds of Fate and Time.".

"Faith, prevailing o'er his sullen doom,
As bursts the morn on night's unfathom'd gloom,
Lured his dim eye to deathless hopes sublime,
Beyond the realms of nature and of time."

CAMPBELL.]