I leave thee, Warwick, and thy precincts grey,
Amidst a thousand winters still the same,
Ere tempests rend thy last sad leaves away,
And from thy bowers the native rock reclaim;
Crisp dews now glitter on the joyless field,
The gun's red disk now sheds no parting rays,
And through thy trophied hall the burnished shield
Disperses wide the swiftly mounting blaze.

II.

Thy pious paladins from Jordan's shore,
And all thy steel-clad barons are at rest;
Thy turrets sound to warder's tread no more;
Beneath their brow the dove hath hung her nest;
High on thy beams the harmless falchion shines;
No stormy trumpet wakes thy deep repose;
Past are the days that, on the serried lines
Around thy walls, saw the portcullis close.

III.

The bitter feud was quell'd, the culverin
No longer flash'd, us blighting mischief round,
But many an age was on those ivies green,
Ere Taste's calm eye had scann'd the gifted ground;
Bade the fair path o'er glade or woodland stray,
Bade Avon's swans through new Rialtos glide,
Forced through the rock its deeply channell'd way,
And threw, to Arts of peace, the portals wide.