Inscription 1: For A Tablet At Godstow Nunnery

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Title:     Inscription 1: For A Tablet At Godstow Nunnery
Author: Robert Southey [More Titles by Southey]

The three Utilitise of Poetry: the praise of Virtue and Goodness, the Memory of things remarkable, and to invigorate the affections.

Welsh Triad.

INSCRIPTION I.

For a TABLET at GODSTOW NUNNERY.

Here Stranger rest thee! from the neighbouring towers
Of Oxford, haply thou hast forced thy bark
Up this strong stream, whose broken waters here
Send pleasant murmurs to the listening sense:
Rest thee beneath this hazel; its green boughs
Afford a grateful shade, and to the eye
Fair is its fruit: Stranger! the seemly fruit
Is worthless, all[1] is hollowness within,
For on the grave of ROSAMUND it grows!
Young lovely and beloved she fell seduced,
And here retir'd to wear her wretched age
In earnest prayer and bitter penitence,
Despis'd and self-despising: think of her
Young Man! and learn to reverence Womankind!

 

[Footnote 1: I have often seen this hazel: its nuts are apparently very
fine, but always without a kernel.]

[The end]
Robert Southey's poem: Inscription 1: For A Tablet At Godstow Nunnery

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