Grey, grey is Abbey Assaroe, by Belashanny town,
It has neither doors nor windows, the walls are broken down;
The carven-stones lie scattered in briar and nettle-bed;
The only feet are those that come at burial of the dead.
A little rocky rivulet runs murmuring to the tide,
Singing a song of ancient days, in sorrow, not in pride;
The boortree and the lightsome ash across the portal grow,
And heaven itself is now the roof of Abbey Assaroe.

     It looks beyond the harbour-stream to Gulban mountain blue;
It hears the voice of Erna's fall,--Atlantic breakers too;
High ships go sailing past it; the sturdy clank of oars
Brings in a salmon boat to haul a net upon the shores;
And this way to his home-creek, when the summer day is done,
Slow sculls the weary fisherman across the setting sun;
While green with corn is Sheegus Hill, his cottage white below,
But grey at every season is Abbey Assaroe.

     There stood one day a poor old man above its broken bridge;
He heard no running rivulet, he saw no mountain-ridge;
He turned his back on Sheegus Hill and viewed with misty sight
The Abbey walls, the burial-ground with crosses ghostly white;
Under a weary weight of years he bowed upon his staff,
Perusing in the present time the former's epitaph;
For, grey and wasted like the walls, a figure full of woe,
This man was of the blood of them who founded Assaroe.

     From Derry to Bundrowes Tower, Tirconnel broad was theirs;
Spearmen and plunder, bards and wine, and holy abbot's prayers;
With chaunting always in the house that they had builded high
To God and to Saint Bernard,--where at last they came to die.
At worst, no workhouse grave for him! the ruins of his race
Shall rest among the ruin'd stones of this their saintly place.
The fond old man was weeping; and tremulous and slow
Along the rough and crooked lane he crept from Assaroe.