And place our trophies where men kneel
To Heaven!-but Heaven rebukes my zeal
The cause of Truth and human weal,
O God above!

Transfer it from the sword's appeal

To Peace and Love.

Peace, Love! the cherubim, that join

Their spread wings o'er Devotion's shrine, Prayers sound in vain, and temples shine, Where they are not,—

The heart alone can make divine

Religion's spot.

To incantations dost thou trust,
And pompous rites in domes august?
See moldering stones and metal's rust
Belie the vaunt,

That man can bless one pile of dust
With chime or chaunt.

The ticking wood-worm mocks thee, man! Thy temples,-creeds themselves grow wan! But there's a dome of nobler span,

A temple given

Thy faith, that bigots dare not ban,-
Its space is Heaven!

Its roof, star-pictured Nature's ceiling,
Where, trancing the rapt spirit's feeling,
And God himself to man revealing,

The harmonious spheres

Make music, though unheard their pealing
By mortal ears.

Fair stars! are not your beings pure?
Can sin, can death, your worlds obscure?
Else why so swell the thoughts at your
Aspect above?

Ye must be Heavens that make us sure
Of heavenly love!

And in your harmony sublime

I read the doom of distant time:

That man's regenerate soul from crime
Shall yet be drawn,

And reason on his mortal clime

Immortal dawn.

What's hallowed ground? 'Tis what gives birth
To sacred thoughts in souls of worth!--

Peace! Independence! Truth! go forth
Earth's compass round;

And your high-priesthood shall make earth

All hallowed ground.

Thomas Campbell [1777-1844]

THE CHURCHYARD

How slowly creeps the hand of Time
On the old clock's green-mantled face!
Yea, slowly as those ivies climb,

The hours roll round with patient pace;

The drowsy rooks caw on the tower,

The tame doves hover round and round; Below, the slow grass hour by hour

Makes green God's sleeping-ground.

All moves, but nothing here is swift;

The grass grows deep, the green boughs shoot; From east to west the shadows drift;

The earth feels heavenward underfoot;

The slow stream through the bridge doth stray
With water-lilies on its marge,

And slowly, piled with scented hay,
Creeps by the silent barge.

All stirs, but nothing here is loud:
The cushat broods, the cuckoo cries;
Faint, far up, under a white cloud,

The lark trills soft to earth and skies;

And underneath the green graves rest;

And through the place, with slow footfalls,
With snowy cambric on his breast,

The old gray Vicar crawls.

And close at hand, to see him come,
Clustering at the playground gate,
The urchins of the school-house, dumb
And bashful, hang the head and wait;
The little maidens curtsey deep,

The boys their forelocks touch meanwhile,
The Vicar sees them, half asleep,

And smiles a sleepy smile.

Slow as the hand on the clock's face,
Slow as the white cloud in the sky,
He cometh now with tottering pace
To the old vicarage hard by;
Smothered it stands in ivy leaves,

Laurels and yews make dark the ground;
The swifts that build beneath the eaves
Wheel in still circles round.

And from the portal, green and dark,
He glances at the church-clock old-
Gray soul! why seek his eyes to mark
The creeping of that finger cold?
He cannot see, but still as stone
He pauses, listening for the chime,
And hears from that green tower intone

The eternal voice of Time.

Robert Buchanan [1841-1901]

THE OLD CHURCHYARD OF BONCHURCH

THE churchyard leans to the sea with its dead,—

It leans to the sea with its dead so long.

Do they hear, I wonder, the first bird's song,
When the winter's anger is all but fled;

The Old Churchyard of Bonchurch 3225

The high, sweet voice of the west wind,
The fall of the warm, soft rain,

When the second month of the year

Puts heart in the earth again?

Do they hear, through the glad April weather,
The green grasses waving above them?

Do they think there are none left to love them,
They have lain for so long there together?

Do they hear the note of the cuckoo,

The cry of gulls on the wing,

The laughter of winds and waters,
The feet of the dancing Spring?

Do they feel the old land slipping seaward,—
The old land, with its hills and its graves,—
As they gradually slide to the waves,

With the wind blowing on them from leaward?
Do they know of the change that awaits them,—
The sepulcher vast and strange?

Do they long for the days to go over,
And bring that miraculous change?

Or love they their night with no moonlight,
With no starlight, no dawn to its gloom?
Do they sigh: "Neath the snow, or the bloom
Of the wild things that wave from our night,
We are warm, through winter and summer;
We hear the winds rave, and we say:
'The storm-wind blows over our heads,
But we, here, are out of its way'"?

Do they mumble low, one to another
With a sense that the waters that thunder
Shall ingather them all, draw them under:
"Ah, how long to our moving, my brother?
How long shall we quietly rest here,
In graves of darkness and ease?
The waves even now, may be on us
To draw us down under the seas!"

Do they think 'twill be cold when the waters
That they love not, that neither can love them,
Shall eternally thunder above them?

Have they dread of the sea's shining daughters,
That people the bright sea-regions

And play with the young sea-kings?

Have they dread of their cold embraces,
And dread of all strange sea-things?

But their dread or their joy,-it is bootless: They shall pass from the breast of their mother; They shall lie low, dead brother by brother,

In a place that is radiant and fruitless;

And the folk that sail over their heads

In violent weather

Shall come down to them, haply, and all

They shall lie there, together.

Philip Bourke Marston [1850-1887]

THE INDIAN BURYING-GROUND

In spite of all the learned have said,
I still my old opinion keep;
The posture that we give the dead
Points out the soul's eternal sleep.

Not so the ancients of these lands;--
The Indian, when from life released,
Again is seated with his friends,

And shares again the joyous feast.

His imaged birds, and painted bowl,
And venison, for a journey dressed,
Bespeak the nature of the soul,
Activity, that wants no rest.

His bow for action ready bent,
And arrows with a head of stone,
Can only mean that life is spent,

And not the old ideas gone.