The gloomy tenants, Newstead! of thy cells,
Howling, resign their violated nest;
Again the master on his tenure dwells,
Enjoy'd, from absence, with enraptured zest.

Vassals, within thy hospitable pale,

Loudly carousing, bless their lord's return; Culture again adorns the gladdening vale, And matrons, once lamenting, cease to mourn.

A thousand songs on tuneful echo float,
Unwonted foliage mantles o'er the trees;
And hark! the horns proclaim a mellow note,
The hunters' cry hangs lengthening on the breeze.

Beneath their coursers' hoofs the valleys shake: What fears, what anxious hopes, attend the chase!

The dying stag seeks refuge in the Lake; (1)
Exulting shouts announce the finished race.

Ah happy days! too happy to endure!

Such simple sports our plain forefathers knew: No splendid vices glitter'd to allure;

Their joys were many, as their cares were few.

(1) During the lifetime of the fifth Lord Byron, there was found in this Lake-where it is supposed to have been thrown for concealment by the Monks a large brass eagle, in the body of which, on its being sent to be cleaned, was discovered a secret aperture, concealing within it a number of ancient documents connected with the rights and privileges of the foundation. At the sale of the old Lord's effects, in 1776, this eagle was purchased by a watchmaker of Nottingham; and it now forms, through the liberality Sir Richard Kaye, an appropriate ornament of the fine old church of Southwell, E.

From these descending, sons to sires succeed; Time steals along, and Death uprears his dart; Another chief impels the foaming steed,

Another crowd pursue the panting hart.

Newstead! what saddening change of scene is thine!
Thy yawning arch betokens slow decay;
The last and youngest of a noble line

Now holds thy mouldering turrets in his sway.

Deserted now, he scans thy gray worn towers;
Thy vaults, where dead of feudal ages sleep;
Thy cloisters, pervious to the wintry showers;
These, these he views, and views them but to
weep.

Yet are his tears no emblem of regret :

Cherish'd affection only bids them flow. Pride, hope, and love, forbid him to forget, But warm his bosom with impassion'd glow.

Yet he prefers thee to the gilded domes

Or gewgaw grottos of the vainly great ; Yet lingers 'mid thy damp and mossy tombs,

Nor breathes a murmur 'gainst the will of fate. (1)

(1) "Come what may," wrote Byron to his mother, in March 1809, "Newstead and I stand or fall together. I have now lived on the spot; I have fixed my heart upon it; and no pressure, present or future, shall induce me to barter the last vestige of our inheritance. I have that pride within me which will enable me to support difficulties. I can endure privations; but could I obtain, in exchange for Newstead Abbey, the first fortune in the country, I would reject the proposition. Set your mind at ease on that score; I feel like a man of honour, and I will not sell Newstead."

Haply thy sun, emerging, yet may shine,
Thee to irradiate with meridian ray ;(1)
Hours splendid as the past may still be thine,
And bless thy future as thy former day. (2)

CHILDISH RECOLLECTIONS. (3)

"I cannot but remember such things were,

And were most dear to me."

WHEN slow Disease, with all her host of pains, Chills the warm tide which flows along the veins ; When Health, affrighted, spreads her rosy wing, And flies with every changing gale of spring;

(1) "We cannot," said the Critical Review for September, 1807, "but hail, with something of prophetic rapture, the hope conveyed in the closing stanza

"Haply thy sun, emerging, yet may shine," &c.

(2) The reader who turns from this Elegy to the stanzas descriptive of Newstead Abbey and the surrounding scenery, in the thirteenth canto of Don Juan, cannot fail to remark how frequently the leading thoughts in the two pieces are the same; or to be delighted and instructed, in comparing the juvenile sketch with the bold touches and mellow colouring of the master's picture. -E]

(3) These verses were composed while Lord Byron was suffering under severe illness and depression of spirits. " I was laid," he says, " on my back, when that schoolboy thing was written, or rather dictated - expecting to rise no more, my physician having taken his sixteenth fee." In the private volume the poem opened with the following lines :"Hence! thou unvarying song of varied loves, Which youth commends, maturer age reproves;

Which every rhyming bard repeats by rote,
By thousands echo'd to the self-same note!
Tired of the dull, unceasing, copious strain,
My soul is panting to be free again.

Farewell! ye nymphs propitious to my verse,
Some other Damon will your charms rehearse;
Some other paint his pangs, in hope of bliss,
Or dwell in rapture on your nectar'd kiss.

Not to the aching frame alone confined,
Unyielding pangs assail the drooping mind:
What grisly forms, the spectre-train of woe,
Bid shuddering Nature shrink beneath the blow,
With Resignation wage relentless strife,

While Hope retires appall'd, and clings to life.
Yet less the pang when, through the tedious hour,
Remembrance sheds around her genial power,
Calls back the vanish'd days to rapture given,
When love was bliss, and Beauty form'd our heaven;
Or, dear to youth, portrays each childish scene,
Those fairy bowers, where all in turn have been.
As when through clouds that pour the summer storm
The orb of day unveils his distant form,

Those beauties, grateful to my ardent sight,
No more entrance my senses in delight;
Those bosoms, form'd of animated snow,
Alike are tasteless, and unfeeling now.
These to some happier lover I resign.
The memory of those joys alone is mine.

Censure no more shall brand my humble name,
The child of passion and the fool of fame.
Weary of love, of life, devour'd with spleen,

I rest a perfect Timon, not nineteen.

World! I renounce thee! all my hope's o'ercast:
One sigh I give thee, but that sigh 's the last.
Friends, foes, and females, now alike adieu!
Would I could add, remembrance of you too!
Yet though the future dark and cheerless gleams,
The curse of memory, hovering in my dreams,
Depicts with glowing pencil all those years,
Ere yet my cup, empoison'd, flow'd with tears;
Still rules my senses with tyrannic sway,
The past confounding with the present day.
"Alas! in vain I check the maddening thought;
It still recurs, unlook'd for and unsought:
My soul to Fancy's," &c. &c., as at line 29.

Gilds with faint beams the crystal dews of rain,
And dimly twinkles o'er the watery plain;
Thus, while the future dark and cheerless gleams,
The sun of memory, glowing through my dreams,
Though sunk the radiance of his former blaze,
To scenes far distant points his paler rays;
Still rules my senses with unbounded sway,
The past confounding with the present day.

Oft does my heart indulge the rising thought, Which still recurs, unlook'd for and unsought; My soul to Fancy's fond suggestion yields, And roams romantic o'er her airy fields; Scenes of my youth, developed, crowd to view, To which I long have bade a last adieu! Seats of delight, inspiring youthful themes; Friends lost to me for aye, except in dreams; Some who in marble prematurely sleep, Whose forms I now remember but to weep; Some who yet urge the same scholastic course Of early science, future fame the source; Who, still contending in the studious race, In quick rotation fill the senior place. These with a thousand visions now unite, To dazzle, though they please, my aching sight. (1) IDA! blest spot, where Science holds her reign, How joyous once I join'd thy youthful train!

Bright in idea gleams thy lofty spire,

Again I mingle with thy playful quire;

(1) The next fifty-six lines, to

"Here first remember'd be the joyous band,"

were added in the first edition of Hours of Idleness.

-E.