NEVER more, when the day is o'er, <br />Will the lonely vespers sound; <br />No bells are ringing—no monks are singing, <br />When the moonlight falls around. <br /> <br />A few pale flowers, which in other hours <br />May have cheered the dreary mood; <br />When the votary turned to the world he had spurned, <br />And repined at the solitude. <br /> <br />Still do they blow 'mid the ruins below, <br />For fallen are fane and shrine, <br />And the moss has grown o'er the sculptured stone <br />Of an altar no more divine. <br /> <br />Still on the walls where the sunshine falls, <br />The ancient fruit-tree grows; <br />And o'er tablet and tomb, extends the bloom <br />Of many a wilding rose. <br /> <br />Fair though they be, yet they seemed to me <br />To mock the wreck below; <br />For mighty the tower, where the fragile flower <br />May now as in triumph blow. <br /> <br />Oh, foolish the thought, that my fancy brought; <br />More true and more wise to say, <br />That still thus doth spring, some gentle thing, <br />With its beauty to cheer decay.<br /><br />Letitia Elizabeth Landon<br /><br />http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/fountain-s-abbey/
