Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, TOWARDS DEMOCRACY: PART 4. A VILLAGE CHURCH, by EDWARD CARPENTER


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

TOWARDS DEMOCRACY: PART 4. A VILLAGE CHURCH, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: A stump of oak - a huge old ruin of a tree, shored up with props
Last Line: The peacock flew from its tree overhead to the east and into the night.
Subject(s): Christianity; Churches; Clergy; History; Mankind; Cathedrals; Priests; Rabbis; Ministers; Bishops; Historians; Human Race


A STUMP of oak—a huge old ruin of a tree, shored up with props;
And close beside it a vast and splendid Yew—still flourishing though
fully a thousand years of age—
With congregated stems upstanding, straight as a gothic pillar, and mighty
outspread arms on every side—a home for birds for countless generations;
And almost underneath the branches of the yew, sunk somewhat in the ground,

A tiny little Church—squat roof and belfry—with Saxon walling and
low dark Norman doorway.

And evening falls, and to us sitting in the lane
From the low door as from some cavern-mouth of the Earth
Come sounds of old old chants and murmur of ancient prayers, and the
wailing of responses,
Wafted—and a faint faint odor of incense (for High Church is the
service),
And dimly seen, as through the mists of time, the glint of candles on the
altar-table.

Voices indeed of Time and the Earth, like some strange incantation,
Issuing from the gloom beneath the Yew-tree,
Coming adown forgotten centuries—
Voices and echoes of ages of Christianity, borne onward with the sound of
Norman and Saxon chisels:
Phrases that Chrysostom wrote, or good St. Basil; or borrowed from
primitive liturgies of the earliest Christians;
Scraps of antiphonies sung within the Catacombs; tags, litanies and Kyrie
Eleisons, adapted from pagan rituals;
Fragments of Creeds and Glorias from the days of Athanasius and the
Councils; or sanctioned by the use of Sarum;
Gregorian chants, and quaint melodic strains from far Greek sources:
These blent together,
And laden with hopes and fears of hearts long buried,
Come issuing from the doorway.

And all the while under the evening sky
The landscape stretches, so fair, so calm, so actual,
And in the air the delicious waft of hawthorn-blossom
Floats, and the red June sunset hangs in the West,
And high in the branches of the Yew, a peacock,
Preening its feathers, sits.

How strange!
To think of the old old life for a thousand years that has gathered round
these stones, and since the yew was a seedling planted,
Of the generations of men and women to whom the Church has been the centre
of their days—their first and latest home;
The old clock striking the hours and the quarters through years and
decades,
The old bell tolling its way through the centuries, with pendulum-swing of
life-times;
The infants and wide-eyed children brought in for baptism; and after eighty
years brought in again—mere broken husks of aged folk—for burial;
And their children the same, and theirs again the same, and theirs, and
theirs;
Till at length by the font where the monk once muttered his Latin blessing,
a smug young curate stands and lisps the service;
The marriages, the festivals, the long tradition of the mass and the holy
communion from that last supper in Jerusalem;
The glow of religious adoration, and the pain of broken hearts, age after
age; the hopes of Heaven, the nightmare doubts of Hell;
And the trio of Gods aloft, looking on all the time,
The Father, the Son, and the Ghost,
And the dear Mother Mary, a little aside, apart,
And the crowd of Saints in the background—
The council-chamber of heaven.

And the terrestrial councils held in the Church,
The conferences of the local Barons with the clergy, the visitations of
Bishops,
The stormy scenes in the vestry, while the congregation is waiting in the
pews;
The Folk-motes called in the Churchyard, the preparations for defence in
time of civil war;
The fierce fights on occasions all round the building and amongst the
tomb-stones; and up the stone stairs of the Tower—the monks and priests
laying about them with heavy candlesticks.

To think of it all:
Of the images that have stood in those niches and been cast down and broken
to shards;
And of the tapestries and altar-cloths that have been woven and stitched
with pious care, and that have long since faded away—
And the little church still standing!
And still the old vague-toned Gregorian phrases wandering down, and still
the golden voice of Chrysostom sounding from afar over the hubbub of the ages,
Floating on the waft of incense, and mingling with the breath of the
hawthorn, this June night, 1900.

How wonderful!
The romance, the poetry, the heart-yearnings—
As once perhaps they gathered round some Greek Temple:
[Where the young man, having washed his body and offered a sacrifice before
the laurel-crowned priest, poured out his heart in prayer to Apollo, touching
the knees of the god with a leafy olive-wand;
Or the expectant mother came to Juno Lucina with a branch of palm in her
hands;
Or the old man at midnight, with a propitiatory offering, to the shrine of
Proserpine:]
So, all these centuries and round the village church,
A like romance has gathered.

And presently an alien folk will come, with alien thoughts and customs;
And this little shrine half-buried in the ground, with its candles and
incense and stuffy dingy interior,
And its three Gods sitting up aloft, and its doubtful glances at Mary,
Will seem as far back and strange as anything Greek or Egyptian.

Thus as I dreamed, wandering away in thought through the long long past and
future,
The service ended, and in the last glow of sunset
Out came a crowd of gaily-colored girls in silks and muslin, and village
youths, and a top-hat squire or two—all modern as modern—
And knowing or recking nothing of Chrysostom and Basil:
Into the sweet evening air and dusk they came, with cheerful babble,
Discussing the local fashions or last event in politics;
When sudden a yell rang out in the sky, like the yell of a monstrous cat,
And with a great rush of wings, and to a chorus of exclamations,
The peacock flew from its tree overhead to the East and into the Night.





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