Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE FORESIDE MEETING HOUSE, by EDWARD NOYES POMEROY


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE FORESIDE MEETING HOUSE, by                    
First Line: The meeting house belies its age today
Last Line: When we are memories.
Subject(s): Churches; God; Prayer; Sabbath; Cathedrals; Sunday


The Meeting House belies its age today;
The spot its loveliness unspoiled retains;
The silver shimmer of the isle-strewn bay
Still passing, still remains.

Here gathered they who in contrition came
With sin and sorrow and their solace found;
Here left memorials to last when fame
Oblivion has drowned.

Here, in the morning and the evening hush,
Their faces grave by sacred flame illumed,
Devotion's sacrifice, like Horeb's bush,
Burned and was not consumed.

Here turning oft from earth to Heaven their gaze,
They loved, these dwellers in Faith's age of gold,
To hear their elders, in the olden phrase,
The older truth unfold.

And here the singing of the rural choir
Was touched to heavenly harmony as when,
Their voices thrilling with celestial fire,
The angels sang to men.

As then the forest presses on behind;
The pasture stretches to the wave before;
The fishhawk circles wide his prey to find,
But these—no more, no more!

Yet there's a breathing in the brooding air,
A glamor in the dawn and death of day,
A presence, nowhere and yet everywhere
That is, and is not, they.

Today we worship at the ancient shrine,
Remote from noise and worriment's alarm;
We gaze our fill on Nature's face divine
Uncheated of a charm.

And when the shrine and scene we leave behind,
Childhood and age will gather, year by year,
The Sabbath satisfaction still to find,
And lose their burdens here;

For yonder molten mirror will be bright,
The girdled landscape meet the girdling skies,
And God His children to His Fane invite
When we are memories.





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