The halls, where late the banquet revelled, or the sceptre of justice threatened, now echoed only to the straying steps of ancient menials. In the courts so lately filled with princely pomp and tumult, where the hurrying foot passed incessantly to and fro; where the many sounding hoof trampled, and the hum of voices rose, all was now so still, that, when the solitary sentinel ceased his measured pace, you might hear only the shivering of the ivy, or the distant echo to the closing door of some deserted chamber, murmuring through empty galleries, which, of late, to have looked upon would have filled you with marvel of the high dames and gaudy gentils passing through them. These courts now spoke only at certain hours, when the watchword went its round, or a single trumpet of the garrison called together the few armed tenants, stationed at gate, or rampart, and the guard was changed.
Thus quickly passed away this courtly vision from these woods of Ardenn. And so from before every eye departs the vision of this life, whether it appear in lonesome forest, in busy city, in camp, or court, — where may be pressed within the compass of a few short days, the agitating passions, with all their varying shades and combinations, the numerous events and wise experience, that make up years of ordinary life and the seeming ages of a cloistered one; for there, pale moment, lingering after moment, like rain-drop following drop, keeps melancholy chime with chants too formally repeated to leave, except on very few, the due impression of their meaning, and with slow returning vigils. Yet even here life is still a fleeting vision! As such it fades, whether in court or convent, nor leaves a gleam behind — save of the light of good works!
And thus endeth this Trew Chronique.
CONCLUSION
Willoughton, long before he had finished this “Trew Chronique,” had some doubts, as to its origin. With the enthusiasm of an antiquary, he was willing to suppose it a real manuscript of the monks, in spite of some contradictory circumstances. The illuminations it exhibited, with the many abbreviations and quaintnesses in the writing, only a few of which, however, he has preserved in this, his translation, and those few but here and there, where they seem to have gained admission, by their accordance with the matter then in narration, these traits justified, in some degree, his willing opinion.
Perhaps, one better versed in antiquities would have found out, that several of the ceremonies of the court here exhibited, were more certainly those of the fourth Edward, than of the third Henry, or the second Richard, and would have assigned the manuscript to a later period than that of the title, or than that afterwards alluded to in the book, whether written by monk or layman. And though that same title said this chronicle was translated from the Norman tongue, by Grymbald, a monk of Saint Mary’s Priory, it said nothing of its having been composed by one; and the manuscript itself seemed to bear evidence against such a supposition, by the way in which some of the reigning superstitions of Henry the Third’s time and of the monastic life in general were spoken of. He must have been a very bold man, at that period, who had dared to utter even from under a cowl, a doubt, concerning the practice of magic, or witchcraft. It is, however, to be acknowledged, that, on some other points, his notions were not unworthy of a monk of the thirteenth century, that is, if he really credited all the supposed incidents of the hall, and of several other parts of the castle. The way, in which he speaks of the melancholy monotony and other privations of a cloister, seem to come from heart-felt experience; yet, if it had been so, he might not have ventured thus to have expressed his feelings.
But at whatsoever period this “Trew Chronique” had been written, or by whomsoever, Willoughton was so willing to think he had met with a specimen of elder times, that he refused to dwell on the evidence, which went against its stated origin, or to doubt the old man’s story of the way in which it had been found; and he was about to enter upon another of these marvellous histories, entitled “A trew historie of two Mynstrells, that came by night to the commandary of Saint John Hospitalier, at Dalby sur les Wouldes, and what they there discovered.”
But, behold! the beams of another day springing on the darkness! On drawing aside a window-curtain, he perceived the dawn upon the horizon; and, who ever yet beheld those first pure tints of light upon the darkness, more touching, more eloquent to the soul, than even the glorious sunrise, and turned abruptly from them? The towers of Warwick castle soon began to show themselves on the east, their mighty shadows raised up against the increasing light in peace and stillness. The morning-star alone rode bright above them, trembling on the edge of a soft purple cloud, that streaked the dawn.
The heart of Willoughton was deeply aFFected by the almost holy serenity, the silent course of order and benevolence, that he witnessed in these first minutes of another day; he looked up to Heaven, and breathed a prayer of blissful gratitude and adoration; and then departed to his rest.
“Tomorrow to fresh fields and pastures new.”
The Poetry
Kenilworth Castle, one of the many places that Radcliffe explored while travelling through England with her husband
ST. ALBAN’S ABBEY: WITH SOME POETICAL PIECES
St Alban’s Abbey: with Some Poetical Pieces was published posthumously in 1826 and is Radcliffe’s longest piece of poetry. She would frequently intersperse her novels with short poems, but did not devote time during her career to writing separate collections of poetry. St Alban’s Abbey does not reflect Radcliffe’s rich prose style and she does not maintain a steady rhyme scheme. The poem has a long, rambling quality to it and there is little to connect the famous author of Gothic fiction of the picturesque and sublime with this work. The poem is set at the beginning of the War of the Roses and includes a series of incidents which are connected with Richard of York’s defeat of the Lancastrians in the First Battle of St Alban’s in May 1455. York and his ally, The Earl of Warwick, overcame the Lancastrian Duke of Somerset and managed to capture the King Henry VI. The poem is a mosaic of incidents and events including monks watching the Battle from the Abbey, banquets and dirges for the dead.
In volume 39 of The Edinburgh Review, published in 1834, St Alban’s Abbey is criticised for being ‘miserably told....broken and confused by tedious description’ and that ten cantos deep the reader has the ‘most indistinct notion what the whole is about’. The reviewer censures Radcliffe for writing a non-cohesive poem and argues that ‘the whole [is] blended in such a hazy mass, as absolutely to defy all attempts at decomposing it into its particulars’.
St Alban’s Cathedral
CONTENTS
ADVERTISEMENT.
ST. ALBAN’S ABBEY
CANTO I.
CANTO II.
CANTO III.
CANTO IV.
CANTO V.
CANTO VI.
CANTO VII.
CANTO VIII.
CANTO IX.
CANTO X.
The Battle of St Alban’s
ADVERTISEMENT.
Of the poetical powers of MRS. RADCLIFFE, apart from those examples of the spirit of poetry which breathe so vividly through her prose romances, there has hitherto been no adequate impression conveyed to the public — perhaps because they have only been presented, for the most part, in subordinate connection with her prose writings. It is intended, by the present collection of such of her detached productions as wear expressly the outward garb of the poetic muse, to give to her merits as a writer of compositions in verse a fairer opportunity for appreciation. The tale of “St. Alban’s Abbey” must doubtless prove, in an eminent degree, welcome to the imaginative reader, as superadding to the graces of poetic treatment the charm of a romantic story — that charm in which Mrs. Radcliffe so conspicuously excelled; and it may be safely affirmed, both of that production and of the minor poems which follow it, that, when examined, they will be found replete with rich imagery and felicitous expression.
ST. ALBAN’S ABBEY
A POETICAL ROMANCE.
SPIRIT of ancient days! who o’er these walls,
Unseen and silent, hold’st thy solemn state
,
Thy presence known where the gloom deepest fells;
And by th’ unearthly thoughts that on thee wait:
Descend, and touch my heart with thine own fire,
And nerve my trembling fancy to aspire
To the dread scenes that thou hast witnessed here!
Teach me, in language sipiple and severe,
(Such best may harmonize with ruder times)
With place and circumstance of awful crimes,
To paint th’ awakening vision thou hast spread
Before mine eyes — tale of the mighty dead!
And let not modern polish throw the light
Of living ray within thy vaults of night,
But give thy elder words, whose sober glow,
Like to th’ illumined gloom of thine own aisles,
Touching the mind with more than light may show,
Wakes highest rapture while it darkly smiles.
Presumptuous wish! Ah! not to me are given
Those antients keys, that ope the Poet’s heaven,
Golden and rustless! NOT TO ME ARE GIVEN!
But, if not mine the prize, not mine the crime
Lightly to scorn them, nor the simple chime,
Though tuneless oft, when to the scene more true
Than flowing verse, bright with Castalian dew.
Like Grecian goddess, placed in Saxon choir,
Is the false union of the cadenced rhime
And measured sweetness of the tempered lyre
With subjects darkened by the shroud of Time.
As Gothic saint sleeping in Grecian fane
Is ancient story, shrined in polished strain;
Truth views th’ incongruous scene with stern farewell,
And startled Fancy weeps and breaks her spell.
CANTO I.
THE ABBEY.
I.
KNOW ye that pale and ancient choir,
Whose Norman tower lifts it’s pinnacled spire?
Where the long Abbey-aisle extends
And battled roof o’er roof ascends;
Cornered with buttresses, shapely and small,
That sheltered the Saint in canopied stall; ‘
And, lightened with hanging turrets fair,
That so proudly their dental coronals wear,
They blend with a holy, a warlike air;
While they guard the Martyr’s tomb beneath,
And patient warriors, laid in death?
II.
Know ye that transept’s far-stretched line,
Where stately turrets, more slenderly fine,
Each with a battlement round it’s brow,
Win the uplifted eye below?
How lovely peers the soft blue sky
Through their small double arch on high!
Deepening the darkness of it’s shade,
And seeming holier peace to spread.
More grandly those turrets, mossed and hoar,
Upon the crimson evening soar.
Yet lovelier far their forms appear
When they lift their heads in the moonlight air
And softening beams of languid white
Tip their shadowy crowns with light.
But most holy their look, when a fleecy cloud
O’er them throws it’s trembling shroud,
Then palely thinly dies away,
And leaves them to the full bright ray.
Thus Sorrow fleets from Resignation’s smile;
The virtue lives — the suffering dies the while.
III.
And, as these moonlight-towers we trace,
A living look, a saintly grace
Beams o’er them, when we seem to hear
The midnight-hymn breathe soft and clear,
As from this choir of old it rose.
Each hallowed thought they seem to own,
Expressed by music’s heavenly tone;
And patient, sad, and pale and still,
As if resign’d to wait Time’s will.
Such choral swell and dying close
Stole on the Abbot’s hour of rest,
Like solemn air from spirit blest,
And shaped his vision of repose.
The pious instinct of his soul,
Not even slumber might control:
Soon as he caught the distant lay,
His gathering thoughts half woke to pray
Celestial smile came o’er his brow,
Though sealed in sleep the lid below;
And, when in silence died the strain,
The lingering prayer
His lips forbear,
And deep his slumbers fell again.
IV.
Bold is this Abbey’s front, and plain;
The walls no shrined saint sustain;
Nor tower, nor airy pinnet crown;
But broadly sweeps the Norman arch
Where once in brightened shadow shone
King Offa, on his pilgrim-march
And proudly points the mouldered stone
Of the high-vaulted porch beneath,
Where Norman beauty hangs a wreath
Of simple elegance and grace;
Where slender columns guard the space
On every side, in clustered row,
The triple arch through arch disclose,
And lightly o’er the vaulting throw
The thwart-rib and the fretted rose.
Beside this porch, on either hand,
Giant buttresses darkly stand,
And still their silent vanguard hold
For bleeding Knights, laid here of old;
And Mercian Offa and his Queen
The portal’s guard and grace are seen.
This western front shows various style,
Less ancient than the central pile.
No furrows deep upon its brow
The frown of seven stern centuries show;
Yet the sad grandeur of the whole
Gives it such a look of soul,
That, when upon it’s silent walls
The silvered grey of moonlight falls,
And the fixed image dim appears,
It seems some shade of parted years
Left watching o’er the mouldering dead;
Who here for pious Henry bled,
And here, beneath the wide-stretched ground
Of nave, of choir, of chapels round.
For ever — ever, rest the head.
V.
Now know ye this pale and ancient Choir,
Where the massy tower lifts a slender spire?
Here forty abbots have ruled and one, —
Twenty with pall and mitre on,
And bowed them to the Pope alone.
Their hundred monks, in black arrayed,
The Benedictine rules obeyed;
O’er distant lands they held their sway;
Freed from Peter’s-pence were they;
The gift of palle from Pope they claimed,
And Cardinal-Abbots were they named;
And even old Canterbury’s lord
Was long refused the premier board;
For this was the first British Martyr’s bier,
And the Pope said “ His priest shall have no peer
Now know ye St. Alban’s bones rest here.
VI.
Kings and heroes here were guests
In stately halls, at solemn feasts.
But now, nor dais, nor halls remain
Nor fretted, window’s gorgeous pane
Twilight illuminated throws
Where once the high-served banquet rose
VII.
No fragment of a roof remains
To echo back their wassail strains;
But the long aisles, whose? holy gloom
Still mourns and veils the martyr’s tomb.
The broad grey tower, the turrets wide,
Scattered o’er tower and transept, guide
The distant traveller to their throne,
> Where they high-seated watch alone,
And seem, with aspect sad, to tell,
That they of all their Abbey’s power
Remain to point, where heroes fell,
And monarch met his evil hour,
And guileless, meek, and pious, bowed
To doubtful right’s victorious crowd.
VIII.
Now, if this cloister, fallen and gone,
Ye fain would view, as once it shone,,
Pace ye, with reverend step, I pray,
The grass-grown and forgotten way,
While murmurs low the fitful wind.
Winning to peace the meekend mind;,
And Evening, in her solemn stole,
With stillness o’er those, woods afar,
Leads in blue shade her brightening star,
As spreads the slow gloom from the pole,
And these old towers their watch more awful keep,
(Where once the Curfew spoke with solemn rule)
And the feint hills and all the valley sleep
In misty grey beneath the “dewy cool.”
Yet, if a worldly heart ye wear,
These visioned-shades forbear — forbear!
To thee no dim-seen halls may gleam,
For thee no hallowed tapers beam
On the pale visage through the gloom
Bending in prayer by shrine, or tomb.
Turn thou thy wearied step away;
Go thou where dance and song are gay,
Or where the sun is flaming high,
And leave these scenes to Evening’s sigh.
IX.
But ye, with measured step and slow,
Whose smile is shaded soft with woe;
And ye, who holy, joy can know.
The glow beyond all other glow, — ?.
Ye, whose high spirit dares to dwell
Beyond the reach of earthly spell,
And tread upon the dizzy verge
Delphi Complete Works of Ann Radcliffe (Illustrated) Page 245
