Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard

“ In many places the poor are in the habit of bringing a book, which contains a collection of these churchyard rhymes, to the rector of their parish, in order that he may assist them in choosing one for the monument which they intend to set up. In this case the clergyman has the power of trying to persuade the people to be content with a text of Scripture, or even with the name of their friend and the date of his death, instead of rhyme; but in spite of this we see our churchyards rapidly filled with absurd and almost pagan trash. ”

“ Out of the midst of pale wheat lands and tussocky meadow, intersected by streams which butter bur and marigold announce, and soared over by pewit and lark and the first swallows with their delicate laughter, rises the grim, decorated church, of the same colour as the oak trees round about. White and grey headstones, some of great age, bow to it in the churchyard, and seem mutely to crave for the shelter from the north-east wind. There is much room within. ”

“ Great gloomy churchyard yews, planted, perhaps, by the first church-builders, grow at close quarters and carpet the ground with thick and vivid moss, and two giant trees that look like pollard beeches, but on closer inspection are seen to be ashes, stand sentinel by the south porch, and lift eerie phalanginous branches dramatically upright. ”

“ The roof and spire are still covered with slates, which seem fluttering as if about to take their departure. The churchyard continues in the valley to be the only Christian receptacle for the dead; and within its narrow limits, Catholics, Lutherans, and Calvinists end their worldly differences by soundly sleeping together, side by side. Here and there a tree is seen standing at the head of a Protestant’s grave ”

“ For myself, though a very commonplace person, and not at all sentimentally inclined, I have a great liking for a churchyard. Hardly a day passes on which I do not go and walk up and down for a little in that which surrounds my church. ”

“ I am one of them, a villager with the village mind, and no wish for any other.
This mind or heart includes the dead as well as the living, and the church and churchyard is the central spot and half-way house or camping-ground between this and the other world, where dead and living meet and hold communion—a fact that is unknown to or ignored by persons of the "better class," the parish priest or vicar sometimes included. ”

“ A little way from the village, standing high among the wooded land on the right, is the church. It is half covered with ivy; there are white tombstones round [Pg 4] it, and on its square tower a clock that is seldom right and never to be trusted. From the churchyard there is a divine view: fir woods in the foreground, beech woods to the left, heather moors to the right, and blue in the distance—soft and misty in the memory of those who love them—are the Surrey hills. A beautiful spot to stay and muse in on a drowsy summer day, a blessed one to sleep in when time has met eternity. ”

“ The shadows lay sleeping under the trees, and a family of cocks and hens went plodding inquisitively to and fro among the cabbages in the adjacent field. Just beyond the moat, with only this field between, stood a little solitary church—a church with a wooden porch, and a quaint, bright-red steeple, and a churchyard like a rose-garden, full of colour and perfume, and scattered over with iron crosses wreathed with immortelles. ”

“ Here, too, come the people from the village—bent old women, their wrinkled faces hidden under snowy linen mutches, carrying in their hands, with the long-treasured Bible, a sprig of southernwood and sweetwilliam to smell at during sermon ”

“ A Picturesque Church—Some Reflections upon Church Music—Bob Parker in the Choir—Our Undertaker—A Gloomy Man—Our Experience with the Hot-Air Furnaces—A Series of Accidents—Mr. Collamer's Vocalism—An Extraordinary Mistake.
There are but few old villages in the United States that contain ancient churches so picturesque in situation and in appearance as that which stands in the centre of our town, the most conspicuous of its buildings. The churchyard is filled with graves, for the people still cling to that kindly usage which places the sacred dust of the departed in holy ground. ”

“ In a quiet green churchyard, near a quiet little town, under the shadow of the quaint old church, a little cross marks the graves of a tradesman and of his wife who lived and laboured in their generation, and are at rest. ”

“ I'd like a house on a hill, and would not care to be more than a mile from a good old church, where five or ten generations of simple folk have knelt and worshipped until they were gathered into the quiet churchyard. ”

“ The old church has no other grace than they give it, as it stands staring white on the border of the village green, and sends out over the valleys and uplands the wild, plangent summons of its Sabbath bell. ”

“ Faith's the beechwood which stretched for some miles toward the heathery upland beyond already cast its veil of clear shadow over the red roofs of the village, but the spire of the gray church, over-topping all, still pointed a flaming orange finger into the sky. ”

“ When, in travelling the western country, you meet such a dwelling, do you not instinctively know what you shall see inside of it? Do you not seem to see the trimly-sanded floor, the well-kept furniture, the snowy muslin curtain? Are you not sure that on a neat stand you shall see, as on an altar, the dear old family Bible, brought, like the ancient ark of the covenant, into the far wilderness, and ever overshadowed, as a bright cloud, with remembered prayers and counsels of father and mother, in a far off New England home? ”

“ Not a human habitation was near—every sign and sound of life was reverently remote; and this old church, with its silent congregation of the dead marshaled under its walls, seemed to have spread round it a circle of stillness and desertion that pleased, while it thrilled me. ”

“ At the foot of the declivity, standing like a watchful mother, is the church—the small, the unpretending, the venerable and lovely village church. You do not see a house till she is passed. Before a house was built about her, she was an aged church, and her favoured graves were rich in heavenly clay. ”

“ The ceremonies, the altar ritual, the emblems and symbols of the old Church — often as easy of exhibition and as readily furnished in a wilderness, and really perhaps more imposing and impressive in the rude forest surroundings, in groves, on lake and river shores, than anywhere else — would be attractive, even awing, to simple, childlike people. The very few and the very elemental lessons, positively spoken, never argued, never explained, in which the accompanying teachings were conveyed, asking only assent and implicit faith, would not make a severe exaction on the savage mind. ”

“ The sanctuary of its evangelical history will be preserved to the church unharmed, for outside the gates the great crowd of unbelievers stands guard, who owe the treasures that divine inspiration has given them to the mysterious coldness of tradition. ”

“ The church-yard was a spot which from its retired situation,—without a house, save the church, within a quarter of a mile of it,—seemed the very sanctuary of holiness and solitude. It was surrouded with a strong high dyke, on the outside of which a line of tall ash trees formed a second circle; so that nothing of the external world was visable to an internal observer, save the tops of two long parallel ranges of mountains that walled in the valley, or rather the glen. ”

“ The living inhabitants of a village, congregated in the churchyard where the bodies of their forgotten progenitors for 1000 years repose without memorials of any kind,—is a faint image of the relation which subsists between extant copies of the Gospels and the sources from which they were derived. ”

“ The gospel-tree may remain, but of those who stood as boys or aged men, as young maidens or grave matrons, beneath its shade, some will be laid down in the narrow house, and others will not even present a trace of what they were. Another minister will fill the office of his predecessor, and even the younger children will be grown up to manhood. He who then passes through the village may see old and wrinkled persons looking from their cottage windows, or seated on the green to bless the procession. Those aged persons are strangely altered from what, they were. ”

“ It seemed as if voices from the past were speaking to me from out the crumbling church, from the almonry where the priest dispensed his alms, from the holy-water stoup, from the tomb-stones bearing the sacred emblems of our Christian faith; from everywhere, indeed, there was a silent whispering that here a Christian people once dwelt in peace, and from temples dedicated to Almighty God arose their anthems of praise above the glittering crests of snow. That they should ever have come here seems, however, more strange than that they should have perished as they did. ”

“ We see arising above the trees the church, the centre of the old village life, both religious, secular, and social. It stands upon a site which has been consecrated to the service of God for many centuries. There is possibly in or near the churchyard a tumulus, or burial mound, which shows that the spot was set apart for some religious observances even before Christianity reached our shores. Here the early Saxon missionary planted his cross and preached in the open air to the gathered villagers. ”

“ In the character of his Elegy I rejoice to concur with the common reader; for by the common sense of readers uncorrupted with literary prejudices, after all the refinements of subtilty and the dogmatism of learning, must be finally decided all claim to poetical honours, The "Church-yard" abounds with images which find a mirrour in every mind, and with sentiments to which every bosom returns an echo. The four stanzas beginning "Yet even these bones," are to me original: I have never seen the notions in any other place; yet he that reads them here, persuades himself that he has always felt them. ”

“ We do not, of course, mean to say that a beautiful rural church will make all the population about it devotional, any more than that sunshine will banish gloom; but it is one of the influences that prepare the way for religious feeling, and which we are as unwise to neglect, as we should be to abjure the world and bury ourselves, like the ancient troglodytes, in caves and caverns. ”

“ The country is full of this superstition, so that when one enters a village, the church, not only really but from association, is the ugliest looking building in it, because it is the one in which human nature stoops the lowest and is most disgraced. ”

“ Only let the still red flame in the sanctuary-lamp send up one fitful blaze, one shadow darken the gilded serenity of the altar. Would it forever face him with that bland assumption of the permanence of creed—the damnation of doubt? Would time never tarnish the blinding brightness of the brazen cross? He shivered as if from cold.
Then the voices of the choir swelled out in a song of exhortation—the passionate and profound exhortation of the "Elijah." In an instant it filled the church, flooding nave and chancel with its anthem of adoration:
"Lift thine eyes. ”

“ The church is one of the neatest buildings in the town, though this may be because it is so small as to hold only about twenty-five people. It is devoid of any article of decoration, but outside is a white-washed wooden cross on whose foundation candles are burned, when there is illness in some family, or the local patron saint's influence is sought on such a problem as getting a job. ”

“ Here in the church do we congregate from week to week; but behind it, on a sloping hillside, is the last home of us all, the old burying-ground, overrun with a briery tangle, and relieved by Nature's sweet and cunning hand from the severe decorum set ordinarily about the dead. Our very faithlessness has made it fair. ”

“ Hence a parish-church, in the stillness of the country, is a visible centre of a community of the living and the dead; a point to which are habitually referred the nearest concerns of both.
As, then, both in cities and villages, the dead are deposited in close connection with our places of worship, with us the composition of an epitaph naturally turns, still more than among the nations of antiquity, upon the most serious and solemn affections of the human mind; upon departed worth—upon personal or social sorrow and admiration—upon religion, individual and social—upon time, and upon eternity. ”

“ This village is most delightfully situated on high ground above the Nadder. The sixteenth-century manor house, the rectory and the beautiful church, are all of much interest. The church was built in the fifteenth century and has a fine western tower and spire. The Ley Chapel contains a number of monuments to that family, and the mosaics representing the Angelic Choir over the east window strike an uncommon note for a country church. ”

“ This, with a small farmhouse, in old times a manor house, and its outbuildings and a cottage or two, make the village. So quiet a spot is it that to see a human form or hear a human voice comes almost as a surprise. The little antique church, the few stones, the dark ancient tree—these are everything, and the effect on the mind is strangely grateful—a sense of enduring peace, with something of that solitariness and desolation which we find in unspoilt wildernesses. ”