Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, DESERTED CHURCHYARD, by DAVID MACBETH MOIR


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

DESERTED CHURCHYARD, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: There lay an ancient churchyard
Last Line: The shadowy days of old.
Alternate Author Name(s): Delta
Subject(s): Calm; Churchyards; Desolation; Silence; Solitude; Placid; Undisturbed; Tranquility; Loneliness


I.

THERE lay an ancient churchyard
Upon a heathy hill,
And oft of yore I loiter'd there,
Amid the twilight still;
For 'twas a place deserted,
And all things spake a tone,
Whose wild long music vibrated
To things for ever gone.

II.

Yes! Nature's face look'd lonelier
To fancy's brooding eye,
The dusky moors, the mountains,
And solitary sky;
And there was like a mournfulness
Upon the fitful breeze,
As it wail'd among the hoary weeds,
Or mounted through the trees.

III.

Around were gnarly sycamores,
And, by the wizard stream,
I lay in youth's enchanted ring,
When life was like a dream;
And spectral generations pass'd
Before my mind like waves,
Men that for creeping centuries
Had moulder'd in their graves.

IV.

There, as the west was paling,
And the evening-star shone out,
I leant to watch the impish bat,
That flitting shriek'd about;
Or the crow that to the forest,
With travel-wearied wing,
Sail'd through the twilight duskily,
Like some unearthly thing.

V.

The scowl of Desolation
Hung o'er it like a shade;
And Ruin there, amid the moss,
Her silent dwelling made:
Only unto the elements
'Twas free, and human breath
Felt like unhallow'd mockery,
In that calm field of death.

VI.

Within that solitary place
No monuments were seen
Of woman's love, or man's regret,
To tell that such had been;
And to the soul's wild question,
"Oh dead! where are ye flown?"
Waved to and fro, in mournful guise,
The thistle's beard of down.

VII.

There as I linger'd, pondering,
Amid the mantling night,
Upon the old grey wall the hawk
Would silently alight;
And, rushing from the blasted hills,
With rain-drops on its wing,
The wind amid the hemlock-stalks
Would desolately sing.

VIII.

Life, and the living things of earth,
Seem'd vanish'd quite away;
As there, in vague abstraction,
Amid the graves I lay:
The world seem'd an enchanted world,
A region dim and drear,
A shadowy land of reverie,
Where Silence dwelt with Fear.

IX.

'Twas hard to think that Passion
Had stirr'd, how many a breast,
Which now beneath the nettles rank
Decay'd in lonely rest;
That once they loved like kindred,
These unacknowledged dead,
From whose bare, mouldering relics long
The famish'd worm had fled.

X.

For ages there no mourner
To wail his loss had come;
The dead, and their descendants,
Like yesterday, were dumb;
And sang the hoary cannach,
Upon the casual wind,
A dirge for generations
That left no trace behind.

XI.

So dreary and so desolate
That churchyard was, and rude,
That Fantasy upon the verge
Of Night and Chaos stood;
And, like a Sybil's chronicle,
Mysteriously it told,
In hieroglyph and symbol,
The shadowy days of old.





Discover our Poem Explanations and Poet Analyses!


Other Poems of Interest...
Home: PoetryExplorer.net