Outside the Village Church
‘The old Church doors stand open wide,
Though neither bells nor anthems peal.
Gazing so fondly from outside,
Why do you enter not and kneel?
’It is the sunset hour when all
Begin to feel the need to pray,
Upon our common Father call
To guard the night, condone the day.
‘Is it proud scorn, or humble doubt,
That keeps you standing, lingering, there;
Half in the Church, and half without,
Midway betwixt the world and prayer?
’No meeter moment could there be
For man to talk alone with God.
The careless sexton has, you see,
Shouldered his spade, and homeward trod.
‘The Vicar’s daily round is done;
His back just sank below the brow.
He passed the porches, one by one,
That line the hamlet street, and now
‘He, in his garden, cons the page,
And muses on to-morrow’s text.
The homebound rustic counts his wage,
The same last week, the same the next.
‘Nor priest nor hind are you, but each
Alike is welcome here within;
Both they who learn, and they who teach,
Have secret sorrow, secret sin.
’Enter, and bare your inmost sore;
Enter, and weep your stain away;
Leave doubt and darkness at the door;
Come in and kneel, come in and pray.’
Such were the words I seemed to hear,
By no one uttered, but alack!
The voice of many a bygone year,
Striking the church, and echoing back.
I entered not, but on a stone
Sate, that recorded some one’s loss;
But name and date no more were shown,
The deep-cut lines were smooth with moss.
Below were longsome tags of rhyme,
But what, you could not now surmise.
Alas! alas! that death and time
Should overgrow love’s eulogies.
Round me was Death that plainly spoke
The hopes and aims that life denied;
The curious pomp of simple folk,
The pedantry of rustic pride.
Some slept in square sepulchral caves,
Some were stretched flat, and some inurned;
And there were fresh brown baby graves,
Resembling cradles overturned.
From where I sate I still could watch
The old oak pews, the altar white.
Gable and oasthouse, tile and thatch,
Smiled softly in the sunset light.
From here and there a cottage roof,
Spires of blue vapour ‘gan to steal;
To eyes of love a heavenly proof
The mother warmed the evening meal.
No more the mill-stream chafed and churned;
The wheel hung still, the meal lay whole;
From marsh and dyke the rooks returned,
And circled round and round the toll.
The lambs were mute, the sheep were couched,
The hop-poles bent ’neath leaf and bine;
Adown the road the vagrant slouched,
And glanced up at the alehouse sign.
Again I heard the unseen voice:
‘Why do you come not in and rest?
Whether you grieve or you rejoice,
You here will be a welcome guest.
’To Heaven it is the half-way house,
Where hope can feed, and anguish may
Recline its limbs and rest its brows,
With simple thanks for ample pay.
‘Was it not here you got the name
Which is of you so close a part,
That, uttered, it hath magic claim
To flush love’s cheek, to flood love’s heart?
‘Here too it was, when youth confessed
The weariness of random ways,
And felt a surging in the breast
For faithful nights and fruitful days,
’You came with one who, conquering fear
When love surprised first thought to fly,
Acknowledged with a tender tear
The sweetness of captivity.
‘And here ’twill be when you have ta’en
Last look of love, last look of Spring,
When hearts for you will yearn in vain,
And vain for you the birds will sing,
‘That shuffling feet and slow will come,
With cumbrous coffin, gloomy pall,
And, while within you moulder dumb,
That prayers will rise and tears will fall.
’And should Death haply prove your friend,
And what in life was scorned should save,
Hither it is that feet will wend,
To read the name upon your grave.’
I heard the voice no more. The rooks
Had ceased to float, had ceased to caw;
The sunlight lingered but in nooks,
And, gazing toward the west, I saw,
Beyond the pasture’s withered bents,
Upstanding hop, recumbent fleece,
And sheaves of wheat, like weathered tents,
A twilight bivouac of peace.
Into itself the voice withdrew.
A something subtle all around
Came floating on the rising dew,
And sweetness took the place of sound.
No word of mine, although my heart
Rebelled, the scented stillness shook;
But silence seemed to take my part,
Thus mildly answering mild rebuke:
‘'Tis true I have to you not brought
My eager or despondent mood,
But still by wood and stream have sought
The sanctity of solitude.
‘But as a youth who quits his home
To range in tracts of freër fame,
However far or wide he roam,
Dwells fondly on his mother’s name;
‘So bear me witness, dear old Church,
Although apart our ritual be,
I ne’er have breathed one word to smirch
The Creed that bore and suckled me.
‘Not mine presumptuous thought to cope
With sage’s faith, with saint’s belief,
Or proudly mock the humble hope
That solaced the Repentant Thief.
‘I do not let the elms, that shut
My garden in from world without,
Exclude your sacred presence, but
I lop them when they shoot and sprout;
’That I at eve, that I at dawn,
That I, when noons are warm and still,
Lying or lingering on the lawn,
May see your tower upon the hill.
‘But when Faith grows a sophist’s theme,
And chancels ring with doubt and din,
I sometimes think that they who seem
The most without, are most within.
‘The name you gave, that name I bear;
The bond you sealed, I sacred keep;
And, when my brain is dust and air,
Let me within your precincts sleep.’
The sexton came and scanned once more
The neat square pit of smooth blue clay,
Then turned the key and locked the door,
And so, like him, I went my way.
I had the summons not obeyed;
I had nor knelt nor uttered word;
But somehow felt that I had prayed,
And somehow felt I had been heard.
