Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE RUINS OF SETON CHAPEL, by DAVID MACBETH MOIR


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE RUINS OF SETON CHAPEL, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: The beautiful the powerful, and the proud
Last Line: The pride and insignificance of man!
Alternate Author Name(s): Delta
Subject(s): Altars; Churches; Prayer; Ruins; Worship; Cathedrals


Il y a des Comptes, des Roys, des Ducs; ainsi
C'est assez pour moy d'etre Seigneur De Seton.
MARIE D'ECOSSE.

I.

THE beautiful, the powerful, and the proud,
The many, and the mighty, yield to Time—
Time that, with noiseless pace and viewless wing,
Glides on and on—the despot of the world.

II.

With what a glory the refulgent sun,
Far, from the crimson portals of the west,
Sends back his parting radiance: round and round
Stupendous walls encompass me, and throw
The ebon outlines of their traceries down
Upon the dusty floor: the eastern piles
Receive the chequered shadows of the west,
In mimic lattice-work and sable hues.
Rich in its mellowness, the sunshine bathes
The sculptured epitaphs of barons dead
Long ere this breathing generation moved,
Or wantoned in the garish eye of noon.
The sad and sombre trophies of decay—
The prone effigies, carved in marble mail;
The fair Ladye with cross'd palms on her breast;
The tablet grey with mimic roses bound;
The angled bones, the sand-glass, and the scythe,—
These, and the stone-carv'd cherubs that impend
With hovering wings, and eyes of fixedness,
Gleam down the ranges of the solemn aisle,
Dull 'mid the crimson of the waning light.

III.

This is a season and a scene to hold
Discourse, and purifying monologue,
Before the silent spirit of the Past!
Power built this house to Prayer—'twas earthly power,
And vanished—see its sad mementoes round!
The gilly-flowers upon each fractured arch,
And from the time-worn crevices, look down,
Blooming where all is desolate. With tufts
Clustering and dark, and light-green trails between,
The ivy hangs perennial; yellow-flower'd,
The dandelion shoots its juicy stalks
Over the thin transparent blades of grass,
Which bend and flicker, even amid the calm;
And, oh! sad emblems of entire neglect,
In rank luxuriance, the nettles spread
Behind the massy tablatures of death,
Hanging their pointed leaves and seedy stalks
Above the graves, so lonesome and so low,
Of famous men, now utterly unknown,
Yet whose heroic deeds were, in their day,
The theme of loud acclaim—when Seton's arm
In power with Stuart and with Douglas vied.
Clad in their robes of state, or graith of war,
A proud procession, o'er the stage of time,
As century on century wheeled away,
They passed; and, with the escutcheons mouldering o'er
The little spot, where voicelessly they sleep,
Their memories have decayed;—nay, even their bones
Are crumbled down to undistinguished dust,
Mocking the Herald, who, with pompous tones,
Would set their proud array of quarterings forth,
Down to the days of Chrystal and De Bruce.

IV.

What art Thou now, O pile of olden time?—
A visible memento that the works
Of men do like their masters pass away!
The grey and time-worn pillars, lichened o'er,
Throw from their fretted pedestals a line
Of sombre darkness far, and chequer o'er
The floor with shade and sunshine. Hoary walls!
Since first ye rose in architectural pride—
Since first ye frowned in majesty of strength—
Since first ye caught the crimson of the dawn
On oriel panes, on glittering lattices
Of many-coloured brightness—Time hath wrought
An awful revolution. Night and morn,
From the near road, the traveller heard arise
The hymn of gratulation and of praise,
Amid your ribbed arches: sandalled monks,
Whitened by eld, in alb and scapulaire,
With book and crosier, mass and solemn rite,
Frail, yet forgiving frailties, sojourn'd here,
When Rome was all-prevailing, and obtained—
Though Cæsars and though Ciceros were not
The rulers of her camps and cabinets—
A second empire o'er the minds of men.

V.

What art Thou now, O pile of olden time?—
A symbol of antiquity—a shrine
By man deserted, and to silence left.
The sparrow chatters on thy buttresses
Throughout the livelong day, and sportively
The swallow twitters through thy vaulted roofs,
Fluttering the whiteness of its inner plumes
Through shade, and now emerging to the sun;
The night-owls are thy choristers, and whoop
Amid the silence of the dreary dark;
The twilight-loving bat, on leathern wing,
Finds out a crevice for her callow young
In some dilapidated nook, on high,
Beyond the unassisted reach of man;
And on the utmost pinnacles the rook
Finds airy dwelling-place and home secure.
When Winter with his tempests lowers around,
The whirling snow-flakes, through the open holes
Descending, gather on the tombs beneath,
And make the sad scene desolater still:
When sweeps the night-gale past on forceful wing,
And sighs through portals grey a solemn dirge,
As if in melancholy symphony,
The huge planes wail aloud, the alders creak,
The ivy rustles, and the hemlock bends
With locks of darkness to its very roots,
Springing from out the grassy mounds of those
Whose tombs are long since tenantless. But now,
With calm and quiet eye, the setting sun,
Back from the Grampians that engird the Forth,
Beams mellowness upon the wrecks around,
Tinges the broken arch with crimson rust,
Flames down the Gothic aisle, and mantles o'er
The tablatures of marble. Beautiful—
So bathed in nature's glorious smiles intense—
The ruined altar, the baptismal font,
The wallflower-crested pillars, foliage-bound,
The shafted oriel, and the ribbed roofs,
Labour, in years long past, of cunning hands!

VI.

Thy lords have passed away: their palace home,
Where princes oft at wine and wassail sate,
Hath not a stone now on another left;
And scarcely can the curious eye trace out
Its strong foundations—though its giant arms,
Once, in their wide protecting amplitude,
Even like a parent's circled thee about.
Now Twilight mantles nature: silence reigns,
Save that, beneath, amid the danky vaults,
Is heard, with fitful melancholy sound,
The clammy dew-drop plashing: silence reigns,
Save that amid the gnarly sycamores,
That spread their huge embowering shades around,
From clear, melodious throat, the blackbird trills
His song—his almost homily to man—
Dirge-like, and sinking in the moody heart,
With tones prophetic. Through the trellis green,
The purpling hills look dusky; and the clouds,
Shorn of their edge-work of refulgent gold,
Spread, whitening, o'er the bosom of the sky.
Monastic pile, farewell! to Solitude
I leave thy ruins; though, not more with thee,
Often than on the highways of the world,
Where throng the busy multitudes astir,
Dwells Solitude. On many a pensive eve,
My thoughts have brooded on the changeful scene,
Gazed at it through the microscope of Truth,
And found it, as the Royal Psalmist found,
In all its issues, and in all its hopes,
Mere vanity. With ken reverting far
Through the bright Eden of departed years,
Here Contemplation, from the stir of life
Estranged, might treasure many a lesson deep;
And view, with unsophisticated eye,
The lowly state, and lofty destiny,
The pride and insignificance of man!





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