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Home  »  Poems of Places An Anthology in 31 Volumes  »  Monastery of Old Bangor

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
England: Vols. I–IV. 1876–79.

Wales: Bangor

Monastery of Old Bangor

By William Wordsworth (1770–1850)

THE OPPRESSION of the tumult, wrath and scorn,

The tribulation, and the gleaming blades,—

Such is the impetuous spirit that pervades

The song of Taliesin; ours shall mourn

The unarmed host who by their prayers would turn

The sword from Bangor’s walls, and guard the store

Of aboriginal and Roman lore,

And Christian monuments, that now must burn

To senseless ashes. Mark! how all things swerve

From their known course, or vanish like a dream;

Another language spreads from coast to coast;

Only perchance some melancholy stream

And some indignant hills old names preserve,

When laws and creeds and people all are lost!