TO THE NUNS OF BODNEY. 

YE holy women, say! will ye accept
 The passing tribute of a humble friend? 
Stranger indeed to you and to your faith,
 But O! I hope not stranger to the zeal,
 Which warm'd your bosoms in Religion's cause. 
When impious men commanded you to break
 The vow which bound your souls, and which in youth
 Warm Piety's emphatic lips had made. 
Say! will ye suffer me on that rude tomb,
 Where she reposes (whose benignant smile,
 Whose animated, life-inspiring eye,
 And faded form, majestic, still appears
 In Thought's delusive hour) to shed a tear? 
On her, whose sainted look, though seen but once,
 I never can forget, till Time shall wrap
 The veil of Death around me, and make dumb
 The voice of Memory. Ah! "how low she lies!" 
No marble monument to speak her praise,
 And tell the world that here a DILLON rests. 
One, who in beauty's prime forsook the world,
 And, self-bereav'd of all it holds most dear,
 Retir'd, to pass the pilgrimage of life,
 In solemn prayer and peaceful solitude. 
Ah, vain desire! Ambition's scowling eye
 Must see the cloister, as the palace, low,
 And meek-ey'd Quiet quit her last abode,
 Ere he can pause to look upon the wreck,
 And rue the wild impatience of his hand. 

Hail! blessed spirit! This rude cypher'd stone,
 On which a sister's pensive eye shall muse
 In sorrow, and another relative
 In sweet, though mournful, recollection, bend,
 Shall call a tear into the stranger's eye
 Whene'er he hears the tale, yet make him proud
 That Britain's hospitable land should yield
 All that you could accept, an humble grave.