There was a voice that seemed to tell

Of griefs that were to come

Of friends whose parting word should be
A long and last farewell to me―
Of change, forgetfulness, and woe,
Blighting what hearts were left to glow.

I stood

where years before I stood

Before that early home;

The winter's whelming torrent flood,

Had flung not there its foam;

Nor there had war, with crimson hand,
Hurled in his wrath the flaming brand;
Nor pestilence nor famine raved,
Nor tyranny the land enslaved.

But there the hand of time had wrought, That perishing change on all,

Which leaves but for the brooding thought

The ruin ere the fall;

Making the heart's deep pulse to be

A warning of eternity,

And love for things of earth to seem

The wasted music of a dream,

The flowers had perished not, but grew

Less floridly and bright;

They had not that same living hue,
That odorous breath of light,

Which was around them when each stem
Bloomed for the hand that planted them,
And every thing beside was gay,

And full of young sweet health as they.

And there were all the things the eye
Had registered within the breast,
Wearing the same reality,

But not the charm of old possest;
And where another's eye had seen
But little change in what had been,
time seem'd with quicker tread,

To me,

His desolating hand to spread.

My heart had borne the blight and storm

The toil of many years;

But there was round the darkest form,
That woe or peril wears,

No gloom so deep as that which pressed
Heavily on the aching breast,

When hope its long-sought home surveyed,
And found each home-loved thing decayed.

"Tis not the retrospective glance,
Adown the stream of years,

That makes us scorn the dizzy dance
Of earthly hopes and fears ;

It is the change of things we love,

For their sakes who are now above

The change of things whose forms are wrought Into that linked chain of thought.

LINES WRITTEN AT EVENING, IN

JERPOINT ABBEY.

This noble Abbey is situated on the river Nore, about eight miles distant from Kilkenny. It was founded in 1180, by Donagh Fitz-Patrick, King of Ossory, for Cistersian Monks. Among the mitred abbeys, it was, in wealth, possessions, and architectural splendour, esteemed the fourth in the kingdom. Its extensive and beautiful ruins strikingly attest the justice of this ascribed distinction, as well as irresistibly command the admiration of every beholder. It was suppressed in 1540, and its estate of 1500 acres in demesne land, was granted, with its other estates, to Thomas Butler, tenth Earl of Ormond. The last Lord Abbot was Oliver Grace, one of the descendants of the famous Raymond le Gros, the companion and brotherin-law of Strongbow. This noble family long retained great power and immense property in the Queen's County, and in the County of Kilkenny, where their name and their deeds are still celebrated in the rude lays of the peasantry.

How the earth darkens! not a day-beam cheers
Its pensive look, or gilds the evening sky;
While through the gloom, from other worlds, appears
No smile to bid the gathering shadows die.

All is so sadly still! the cooling breeze,

That from yon mountains their mild freshness bears, Now breathes not, floating through the blossom'd trees, To fan the sable garb which nature wears.

No star upon our world's dark curtain beams,
And the moon mounts not her etherial throne,
Where other eves have seen her sit supreme

In power and brightness, beautifully lone :
While o'er the track of heaven deep clouds advance
And nature sinks into a sullen sleep;
So, like the unearthly stillness of a trance,
From which 'tis luxury to wake and weep.

I gaze where Jerpoint's venerable pile,
Majestic in its ruins, o'er me lowers:

The worm now crawls through each untrodden aisle,
And the bat hides within its time-worn towers.

It was not thus, when, in the olden time,

The holy inmates of yon broken wall

Lived free from woes which spring from care or crime,
Those shackles which the grosser world enthral.
Then, while the setting sun-beams glistened o'er
The earth, arose to heaven the vesper song :
But now the sacred sound is heard no more,
No music floats the dreary aisles along;
Ne'er from its chancel soars the midnight prayer-
Its stillness broken by no earthly thing,
Save when the night-bird wakes the echoes there,
Or the bat flutters its unfeather'd wing.

But mark where yonder dusky clouds roll on,
To cast a darker shade on all below!
Now that the minstrels of the woods are gone,

The stream makes lonely music in its flow.