GLASTONBURY ABBEY AND WELLS CATHEDRAL. LORY and boast of Avalon's fair vale, How sweet the sounds, that, at still daylight's close, When through the glimmering aisle faint "Misereres died. But all is silent now! silent the bell, That, heard from yonder ivied turret high, Warned the cowled brother from his midnight cell; Silent the vesper-chant, the litany Responsive to the organ!-- scattered lie The wrecks of the proud pile, mid arches gray, Now look upon the sister fane of Wells! Sweet o'er the champaign sound its sabbath bells; دو Or shall it meet, in distant years, thy fate, No! to subdue or elevate the soul, Our best, our purest feelings to refine, Still shall the solemn diapasons roll Through that high fane! still hues reflected shine Nor sought for other guide than thee, Almighty Lord! William Lisle Bowles. KING ARTHUR'S FUNERAL. THEN Arthur bowed his haughty crest, But when he fell, with wingéd speed, His champions, on a milk-white steed, Bore him to Joseph's towered fane, And the long blaze of tapers clear, And deep intombed in holy ground, Around no dusky banners wave, No mouldering trophies mark the grave: Each trace that Time's slow touch had worn; And long o'er the neglected stone Oblivion's veil its shade has thrown. Thomas Warton. Glen Nectan. THE SISTERS OF GLEN NECTAN. IN a rocky gorge, midway between the castles of Bottreau and Dundagel, there is a fall of waters into a hollow caldron of native stone, which has borne for ten centuries the name of St. Nectan's Kieve. T is from Nectan's mossy steep IT The foamy waters flash and leap; It is where shrinking wild-flowers grow But wherefore in this far-off dell "Long years agone," the old man said, "Their speech was not in Cornish phrase, "One died, the other's sunken eye They found her silent at the last, Where her lone seat long used to stand, Did fancy give this legend birth, - We know not; but it suits the scene Robert Stephen Hawker. Gloucestershire. GLOUCESTERSHIRE. BELIEVE me, noble lord, I am a stranger here in Gloustershire. William Shakespeare. Gordale. GORDALE. T early dawn, or rather when the air AT Glimmers with fading light, and shadowy eve Is busiest to confer and to bereave; Then, pensive votary! let thy feet repair To Gordale chasm, terrific as the lair Where the young lions couch; for so, by leave |