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Title: To The Nuns Of Bodney
Author: Matilda Betham [
More Titles by Betham]
Ye holy women, say! will ye accept
The passing tribute of a humble friend?
Stranger indeed to you and to your faith,
But O! I hope not stranger to the zeal,
Which warm'd your bosoms in Religion's cause.
When impious men commanded you to break
The vow which bound your souls, and which in youth
Warm Piety's emphatic lips had made.
Say! will ye suffer me on that rude tomb,
Where she reposes (whose benignant smile,
Whose animated, life-inspiring eye,
And faded form, majestic, still appears
In Thought's delusive hour) to shed a tear?
On her, whose sainted look, though seen but once,
I never can forget, till Time shall wrap
The veil of Death around me, and make dumb
The voice of Memory. Ah! "how low she lies!"
No marble monument to speak her praise,
And tell the world that here a DILLON rests.
One, who in beauty's prime forsook the world,
And, _self-bereav'd_ of all it holds most dear,
Retir'd, to pass the pilgrimage of life,
In solemn prayer and peaceful solitude.
Ah, vain desire! Ambition's scowling eye
Must see the cloister, as the palace, low,
And meek-ey'd Quiet quit her last abode,
Ere he can pause to look upon the wreck,
And rue the wild impatience of his hand.
Hail! blessed spirit! This rude cypher'd stone.
On which a sister's pensive eye shall muse
In sorrow, and another relative
In sweet, though mournful, recollection, bend,
Shall call a tear into the stranger's eye
Whene'er he hears the tale, yet make him proud
That Britain's hospitable land should yield
All that you could accept, _an humble grave_.
[The end]
Matilda Betham's poem: To The Nuns Of Bodney
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