Gray, gray is Abbey Asaroe,
by Belashanny town,
It has neither door nor window,
the walls are broken down;
The carven-stones lie scatter'd
in briar and nettle-bed;
The only feet are those that come
at burial of the dead.
A little rocky rivulet
runs murmuring to the tide,
Singing a song of ancient days,
in sorrow, not in pride;
The boortree and the lightsome ash
across the portal grow,
And heaven itself is now the roof
of Abbey Asaroe.
It looks beyond the harbour-stream
to Gulban mountain blue;
It hears the voice of Erna's fall,—
Atlantic breakers too;
High ships go sailing past it;
the sturdy clank of oars
Brings in the salmon-boat to haul
a net upon the shores;
And this way to his home-creek,
when the summer day is done,
Slow sculls the weary fisherman
across the setting sun;
While green with corn is Sheegus Hill,
his cottage white below;
But gray at every season
is Abbey Asaroe.
There stood one day a poor old man
above its broken bridge;
He heard no running rivulet,
he saw no mountain-ridge;
He turn'd his back on Sheegus Hill,
and view'd with misty sight
The Abbey walls, the burial-ground
with crosses ghostly white;
Under a weary weight of years
he bow'd upon his staff,
Perusing in the present time
the former's epitaph;
For, gray and wasted like the walls,
a figure full of woe,
This man was of the blood of them
who founded Asaroe.
From Derry to Bundrowas Tower,
Tirconnell broad was theirs;
Spearmen and plunder, bards and wine,
and holy abbot's prayers;
With chanting always in the house
which they had builded high
To God and to Saint Bernard,—
where at last they came to die.
At worst, no workhouse grave for him!
the ruins of his race
Shall rest among the ruin'd stones
of this their saintly place.
The fond old man was weeping;
and tremulous and slow
Along the rough and crooked lane
he crept from Asaroe.