Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, A CHURCHYARD SOLILOQUY, by HENRY ALFORD


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

A CHURCHYARD SOLILOQUY, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Stand by me here, beloved, where thick crowd
Last Line: The day and darkness, in life's twilight time?
Subject(s): Churchyards


STAND by me here, beloved, where thick crowd
On either side the path the headstones white:
How wonderful is death -- how passing thought
That nearer than yon glorious group of hills,
Aye, but a scanty foot or two beneath
This pleasant sunny mound, corruption teems; --
And that one sight of that which is so near
Could turn the current of our joyful thoughts,
Which now not e'en disturbs them.
See this stone,
Not, like the rest, full of the dazzling noon,
But sober brown -- round which the ivy twines
Its searching tendril, and the yew-tree shade
Just covers the short grave. He mourn'd not ill
Who graved the simple plate without a name:
"This grave's a cradle, where an infant lyes,
Rockt faste asleepe with death's sad lullabyes."
And yet methinks he did not care to wrong
The genius of the place, when he wrote "sad:"
The chime of hourly clock, -- the mountain stream
That sends up ever to thy resting-place
Its gush of many voices -- and the crow
Of matin cock, faint it may be but shrill,
From elm-embosom'd farms among the dells, --
These, little slumberer, are thy lullabyes:
Who would not sleep a sweet and peaceful sleep,
Thus husht and sung to with all pleasant sounds?
And I can stand beside thy cradle, child,
And see yon belt of clouds in silent pomp
Midway the mountain sailing slowly on,
Whose beaconed top peers over on the vale; --
And upward narrowing in thick-timbered dells
Dark solemn coombs, with wooded buttresses
Propping his mighty weight -- each with its stream,
Now leaping sportfully from crag to crag,
Now smooth'd in clear black pools; then in thevales,
Through lanes of bowering foliage glittering on,
By cots and farms and quiet villages
And meadows brightest green. Who would not sleep,
Rock'd in so fair a cradle?
But that word,
That one word -- "death," comes over my sick brain
Wrapping my vision in a sudden swoon:
Blotting the gorgeous pomp of sun and shade,
Mountain and wooded cliff, and sparkling stream,
In a thick dazzling darkness. -- Who art thou
Under this hillock on the mountain side?
I love the like of thee with a deep love,
And therefore call'd thee dear -- thee who art now
A handful of dull earth. No lullabyes
Hearest thou now, be they or sweet or sad --
Not revelry of streams, nor pomp of clouds;
Not the blue top of mountain -- nor the woods
That clothe the steeps, have any joy for thee.
Go to, then -- tell me not of balmiest rest
In fairest cradle -- for I never felt
One half so keenly as I feel it now,
That not the promise of the sweetest sleep
Can make me smile on death. Our days and years
Pass onward -- and the mighty of old time
Have put their glory by, and laid them down
Undrest of all the attributes they wore,
In the dark sepulchre -- strange preference
To fly from beds of down and softest strains
Of timbrel and of pipe, to the cold earth,
The silent chamber of unknown decay:
To yield the delicate flesh, so loved of late
By the informing spirit, to the maw
Of unrelenting waste; to go abroad
From the sweet prison of this moulded clay,
Into the pathless air, among the vast
And unnamed multitude of trembling stars;
Strange journey, to attempt the void unknown
From whence no news returns; and cast the freight
Of nicely treasured life at once away.
Come, let us talk of death -- and sweetly play
With his black locks, and listen for a while
To the lone music of the passing wind
In the rank grass that waves above his bed.
Is it not wonderful, the darkest day
Of all the days of life -- the hardest wrench
That tries the coward sense, should mix itself
In all our gentlest and most joyous moods,
A not unwelcome visitant -- that thought,
In her quaint wanderings, may not reach a spot
Of lavish beauty, but the spectre form
Meets her with greeting, and she gives herself
To his mysterious converse? I have roam'd
Through many mazes of unregistered
And undetermined fancy; and I know
That when the air grows balmy to my fee!
And rarer light falls on me, and sweet sounds
Dance tremulously round my captive ears,
I soon shall stumble on some mounded grave;
And ever of the thoughts that stay with me,
(There are that flit away) the pleasantest
Is hand in hand with death: and my bright hopes,
Like the strange colours of divided light,
Fade into pale uncertain violet
About some hallow'd precinct. Can it be
That there are blessed memories join'd with death,
Of those who parted peacefully, and words
That cling about our hearts, utter'd between
The day and darkness, in Life's twilight time?





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