When I behold, with deep astonishment,
To famous Westminster how there resorte,
Living in brasse or stoney mo,
The princes and the worthies of all sorte;
Doe not I see reformde nobilitie,
Without pt, or pride, or ostentation,
And looke upon offenselesse majesty,
Naked of pomp or earthly domination?
And holay-game of a paione
tents the quiet now and silent sprites,
Whome all the world which late they stood upon
Could not tent nor quench their appetites.
Life is a frost of cold felicitie,
Ah the thaw of all our vanitie.
CHRISTOLEROS EPIGRAMS, BY T. B. 1598.
ON one of those sober and rather melancholy days iter part of autumhe shadows of m and evening almost miogether, and throw a gloom over the dee of the year, I passed several hours in rambling about Westminster Abbey. There was something genial to the season in the mournful magni?ce of the old pile, and as I passed its threshold it seemed like stepping bato the regions of antiquity and losing myself among the shades of fes.
I entered from the inner court of Westminster School, through a long, low, vaulted passage that had an almost subterranean look, being dimly lighted in one part by circular perforations in the massive walls. Through this dark avenue I had a distant view of the cloisters, with the ?gure of an old verger in his blaoving along their shadowy vaults, and seeming like a spectre from one of the neighb tombs. The approach to the abbey through these gloomy monastic remains prepares the mind for its solemn plation. The cloisters still retain something of the quiet and seclusion of former days. The gray walls are discolored by damps and crumbling with age; a coat of hoary moss has gathered over the inscriptions of the mural mos, and obscured the deaths heads and other funeral emblems. The sharp touches of the chisel are gone from the rich tracery of the arches; the roses which adorhe keystones have lost their leafy beauty; everything bears marks of the gradual dilapidations of time, which yet has something toug and pleasing in its very decay.
The sun down a yellow autumnal ray into the square of the cloisters, beaming upon a sty plot of grass in the tre, and lighting up an angle of the vaulted passage with a kind of dusky splendor. From between the arcades the eye glanced up to a bit of blue sky or a passing cloud, and beheld the sun-gilt pinnacles of the abbey t into the azure heaven.
As I paced the cloisters, sometimes plating this mingled picture of glory and decay, and sometimes endeav to decipher the inscriptions oombstones whied the pavemeh my feet, my eye was attracted to three ?gures rudely carved in relief, but nearly worn away by the footsteps of many geions. They were the ef?gies of three of the early abbots; the epitaphs were entirely effaced; the names alone remained, having no doubt been renewed in later times (Vitalis. Abbas.
1082, and Gislebertus Crispinus. Abbas. 1114, and Laurentius.
Abbas. 1176). I remained some little while, musing over these casual relics of antiquity thus left like wrecks upon this distant shore of time, telling no tale but that such beings had been and had perished, teag no moral but the futility of that pride which hopes still to exaage in its ashes and to live in an inscription. A little longer, and even these faint records will be obliterated and the mo will cease to be a memorial.
Whilst I was yet lookin