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Poems

Chapter 49: DRYBURGH ABBEY. (6)
By William Anderson
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Poetry

About This Book

This collection gathers lyrical pieces that trace the day's and year's cycles, moving through sunrise, morning, noonday, sunset, moonlight and seasonal scenes. It pairs brief landscape lyrics with sonnets, songs, and occasional narrative ballads, blending vivid natural description—mountains, streams, birds, and coastal views—with meditative reflections on mortality, faith, memory, and poetic ambition. The tone alternates between pastoral celebration and sober contemplation, favoring clear sensory detail, moral sentiment, and accessible stanza forms that foreground feeling and observation over formal experimentation.

DRYBURGH ABBEY. (6)

By Tweed's fair stream, in a secluded spot,
Rises an ivy-crowned monastic pile;
Beneath its shadow sleeps the Wizard, Scott;
A Ruin is his resting-place—no vile
Unconsecrated grave-yard is the soil—
Few moulder there, but these the loved, the good,
The honoured, and the famed—and sweet flowers smile
Around the precincts of the Abbeyhood,
While Cedar, Oak, and Yew adorn that solitude.
Hail, Dryburgh! to thy sylvan shades all hail!—
As to a shrine, from places far away,
With awe-struck spirit, to thy classic vale
Shall pilgrims come, to muse, perchance to pray;
More hallowed now than in thy elder day,
For sacred is the earth wherein is laid
The Poet's dust; and still his mind, his lay,
And his renown, shall flourish undecayed,
Like his loved country's fame, that is not doomed to fade.