Glen Collection of printed music > Printed text > Harp of Renfrewshire

PAISLEY ABBEY.
A scene most sternly solemn ! Here the heart,
In all its living fervours, sunny hopes,
Is quenched and shrouded in a spectred gloom.
A dim mysterious grandeur wra^JS that pile.
Upon its massy walls, the hoary spirits
Of many a buried age are slumbering deep.
Reared when a mental night had whehned the world,
And sable Superstition sat enthroned
'Mid phantoms dire, o'er terror-palsied hearts :
It seems the mystic work of goblin toil.
The spoiler has been here : the saintly choir ;
The transepts, too, have felt his ruthless power;
Did he relent when he surveyed that arch
Which springs unfractured yet, although detached
From roof and buttress wall I Seen from this point.
It airy swee^js sublime the southern sky ;
The portals of the ghostly world it seems,
Through which the disembodied spirits pass,
And men have glimpses of eternity.