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 blossomed trees,
To fan the sable garb which nature wears…

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 enthrall…

I mark the venerable Abbot stand
Beneath the shadow of his church’s towers,
Grasping the wicket in his trembling hand,
Reverting to past scenes of happier hours,
And dwelling on the many years gone by
Since first his young lips breath’d his earliest prayer,
To lisp of Him who lives beyond the sky,
And nurse the hope he might behold him there…

No more the banners o’er their ramparts wave,
Or lead their chieftains onwards to the fight,
Where die the vanquish’d, or exult the brave,
For victory – basking in its worshipp’d light.
Gone are the heroes of the days of yore;
Their enemies, like them, have felt decay;
The Chiefs of Ossory, and Leix O’More,
Are mingled in the dust with common clay…Line

Extracted from Lines Written at Jerpoint Abbey by Samuel Carter Hall (1823).