Page:The Works of Lord Byron (ed. Coleridge, Prothero) - Volume 1.djvu/41

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HOURS OF IDLENESS


AND OTHER EARLY POEMS.

ON LEAVING NEWSTEAD ABBEY.[1]


Why dost thou build the hall, Son of the winged days? Thou lookest from thy tower to-day: yet a few years, and the blast of the desart comes: it howls in thy empty court.—Ossian.[2]


1.

Through thy battlements, Newstead,[3] the hollow winds whistle:[4]
Thou, the hall of my Fathers, art gone to decay;
In thy once smiling garden, the hemlock and thistle
Have choak'd up the rose, which late bloom'd in the way.


  1. On Leaving N . . . ST . . . D.—[4to]
    On Leaving Newstead.—[P. on V. Occasions.]
  2. [The motto was prefixed in Hours of Idleness.]
  3. [The priory of Newstead, or de Novo Loco, in Sherwood, was founded about the year 1170, by Henry II. On the dissolution of the monasteries it was granted (in 1540) by Henry VIII. to "Sir John Byron the Little, with the great beard." His portrait is still preserved at Newstead.]
  4. Through the cracks in these battlements loud the winds whistle
    For the hall of my fathers is gone to decay;
    And in yon once gay garden the hemlock and thistle
    Have choak'd up the rose, which late bloom'd in the way.—[4to]