Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, IN A COUNTRY CHURCH, by LEWIS MORRIS (1833-1907)


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

IN A COUNTRY CHURCH, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: The organ peals, the people stand
Last Line: Though truth seem far, we know her face!
Subject(s): Public Worship; Church Attendance


THE organ peals, the people stand,
The white procession through the aisles,
As is our modern use, defiles
In ranks, which part on either hand.

They chant the psalms with resonant voice
These peasants of our Saxon Kent;
With the old Hebrew king rejoice,
With him grow contrite and repent.

But when the pale priest, blandly cold,
White-winged above the eagle bends,
I lose the ancient words of old,
The monotone which still ascends

For there the village school is set,
A row of shining faces bright,
Round cheeks by time unwrinkled yet,
Smooth heads, and boyish collars white.

And through the row there runs a smile,
Like sunlight on a rippling sea --
A childish mirth, devoid of guile;
What may the merry movement be?

The teachers frown; not far to seek
The wonder seems, for it is this:
A little scholar whose round cheek
A stain of gules appears to kiss.

For some low shaft of wintry sun
Strikes where Dame Dorothy of the Grange,
In long devotions never done,
Kneels on through centuries of change;

And from her robe's unfading rose,
Athwart the fair heads ranged below,
A ruddy shaft at random goes,
And lights them with unwonted glow.

And straightway all the scene but these
Grows dim for me; I heed no more
The preacher's smooth monotonies,
The chants repeated o'er and o'er.

For I am borne on fancy's wings
Far from the Present to the Past;
From those which pass to those which last,
The root and mystery of Things.

How many an old and vanished day,
Has gone, she kneeling there the while,
And watching, with her saintly smile,
The generations fade away.

The children came each Sunday there
To hear the self-same chant and hymn;
The boys grew strong, the girls grew fair,
Their lives with fleeting years grew dim.

Their children's children came and went,
She kneeling in the self-same prayer;
They passed to withered age, and bent,
And left the Lady kneeling there.

They grew, they waned through toil and strife,
From innocence to guilt and sin;
They gained what prize was theirs to win,
They sank in shame the load of life.

They passed, and on the churchyard ground
No more their humble names are seen;
Only upon the billowy mound
Yearly the untrodden grass grows green.

And still the kneeling Lady calm
Throws gules on many a childish head,
And still the self-same prayers are said,
The self-same chant, the self-same psalm.

So had it been, before as yet,
Her far-off grandsires lived and died,
Ere long descent had nourished pride,
Before the first Plantagenet.

No change, unless some change there were
In simpler rite or grayer stone,
The self-same worship never done,
And for its very age grown fair.

Great God, the creatures of Thy hand,
Must they thus fail for ever still
Thy high behests to understand,
To seek and find Thy hidden will?

Are Thy hands slow to succour then?
And are Thy eyes, then, blind to see
The toiling, tempted race of men
Born into sin and misery?

For nineteen centuries of Time,
Nay more, for dim unnumbered years,
Men's eyes have sought Thy face sublime,
And turned uncomforted, in tears.

For countless years unsullied youth
Has sunk through grosser mire of sense;
And yet men cherish innocence!
And yet we are no nearer truth!

And not the less from age to age
Heavenward the unchanging suffrage rolls
From hearts inspired by holy rage,
And meek and uncomplaining souls,

Who see no cloud of doubt o'erspread
The far horizons of the sky,
But view with clear, unfailing eye
The mansions of the happy dead.

Oh, wonder! oh, perplexed thought!
Oh, interchange of good and ill!
In vain, by life's long pain untaught,
We strive to solve the riddle still.

In vain, so mixed the twofold skein,
That none the tangle may unwind;
Where one the gate of Heaven may find,
Another shrinks in hopeless pain.

So here the immemorial sum
Of simple reverence may breed
A finer worship than might come
For fruit of some severer creed.

Kneel, Lady, blazoned in thy place!
Through generations children kneel.
To know is weaker than to feel:
Though Truth seem far, we know her face!





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