Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, A REVERIE ON HATHERLEY CHURCHYARD, by MARCUS S. C. RICKARDS


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

A REVERIE ON HATHERLEY CHURCHYARD, by                    
First Line: Nay, mock me not with shifting human smiles
Last Line: For thou art righteousness, and love, and christ, and god!
Subject(s): Beauty; Churchyards; Earth; Love; Nature; Truth; World


NAY, mock me not with shifting human smiles,
Or Nature's light and shade in glistening play!
Oft, fickle Beauty! have I marked thy wiles,
Too oft, the winning glance, the sunny ray
Die in the birth of a dark frown. That spell
Has lost its witchery for one who knows it well.

Change is thy potent charm; but ah! poor hearts,
Dupes of its ruin, we ask more than this --
Somewhat to hint, when chequered glow departs,
That in the background lurks unchanging bliss:
Tho' none could face thy glory here and live,
This may we see, and this I know that thou canst give:

I know it, for I oft the power have felt,
When Music, thy sweet minister, would lure,
Of one note dominant: where all had spelt
Confusion else, that note throughout secure
Sustained the harmony, and lent thee wings
To flit and flash and dazzle with unearthly things.

Oft when I dream has one pure golden thought,
Fixed mid wild riot, seemed to gild the whole:
Oft Morn before my waking sight has brought
The dear home faces, each informed with soul
Of tested love, that leaves expression free
To pout in transient gloom or sparkle with bright glee.

Yea, well I know it, and then best of all
When thou by means of one sweet sylvan scene
Hast held my spirit in delicious thrall.
If ever mortal eyes have pierced thy screen
To vision thee uncurtained, it was there,
For Earth scarce holds a picture more divinely fair.

Ay, fair as changeful; changeful as first Love,
That flushes, flames and glows, to faint and die:
Frail as new Grief, that like the storm above,
Sinks from wild hurricane to tender sigh:
Moody as Fortune, that in one brief year
Oft varies poverty with wealth, and smile with tear.

So alternates that scene -- a holy Rood
Flanked by far hills beyond a swelling plain,
With trees and saplings studded, and dense wood,
Mid many a smiling field, and witching lane,
In guise attuned to each celestial boon,
Sunbeam, cloud, tempest, evening breeze, and silvery moon.

And yet for all its magic impotent
To win the wistful spirit, save that here
With show of change, eternal Rest is blent,
Born of the quiet Church that year by year
Stands central and unvaried to proclaim
That mid Earth's shifting scenes calm Heaven is the same.

And circling evergreens repeat the Tale,
Like bodied echoes that have sunk to Earth,
And risen in fixed forms that never fail;
Or spirits lingering near to temper mirth,
Vested in dark unfading guise, the more
To fetter fickle Fancy to the changeless Shore.

Mid tender April verdure, snow of May,
June green, September gold, October fire,
The massive Tower retains its hoary grey,
In grandeur that seems scarcely to require
Support from yellow elm and burnished beech,
And all the Seasons' splendour, far as eye can reach,

Save as a Monarch needs his spangled dress,
A Judge his ermined scarlet, or a Priest
His snowy robe, to silence and impress;
Save as a high-born Dame resolves to feast
With deep design a suitor's ravished gaze
On rich apparel, varying with various days.

Too feeble similes! for what high King,
What Judge severe, what Priest with blessing fraught,
What Charmer of rapt hearts could ever bring
Such might, truth, comfort, love, as that has brought
Whereto yon Temple witnesses -- which sounds
For many an hour Divine within its sacred bounds.

Ah! measured thus, no emblem seems too high:
The solemn Church, so clam amid decay,
So stern mid waxing glory, how shall I
Belaud such simple grandeur? Shall I say
Eternal Fact, mid fancies of vain time?
Mid fiction light and airy, Poetry sublime?

Celestial Truth, mid fluctuating forms
Born of Earth's falsity and mortal need?
The Christian Faith outweathering the storms
That wreck its fragile garniture? The Creed
Cinctured by an ephemeral pageantry
Outworn and doomed, but which Itself can never die?

The "Kingdom not of this world" vainly graced
With earthly pomp, and backed by temporal power
Whose grandeur falls like trembling leaves when faced
By Autumn's panoply -- frost, wind and shower?
And any loftier name high Fancy gives,
That surely claims which, when all else has faded, lives.

And as that Temple charms the wandering eye,
Unquiet souls are wooed by the sweet Sum
Of what it shadows, what its Rites supply,
The Grace, the Mercy, shed on all who come,
The Hope whose firm support heart-tendrils grasp,
As ivy creepers cling to the old Tower they clasp.

And Fancy bids me note that night this Fane
Are human growths, like the fair clustering trees,
That bloom and wither here -- who know life's pain,
And joy; some toilers, some who live in ease,
None franchised of the laws of vital change,
Not rooted in one spot but free to move and range.

Nor plant-like, with contemporaneous dower
Of sun or shade, but each in solitude
Of special lot; o'er this dark storm-clouds lower;
O'er that the azure smiles; and none intrude,
On others' destiny: each mortal life
Takes shape and colour from its girdling calm and strife.

I, but a guest here, scarce could know it true,
But that one village miniatures the world;
Nay, all the human story glimmers through
One rustic life. As ocean gems empearled
Within their shells, all spirits live the same
In mortal casement, with like purpose, hope and aim:

Yet as a fading landscape, how diverse
Their waning history, their seeming end!
All, green in youth, unmarred by mortal curse;
In age, what sombre tints and bright hues blend!
What shades, from gold to grey, from flame to rust,
Keep lingering state till each yields to the wintry gust!

Strange human tale! Would that I read it clear!
This only know I -- Autumn's varied scene,
Sad tho' it be, is loveliest of the year.
Perchance this visioned from the Clime serene,
Smiles tenderly -- this web all weave; for none
Evades the Passion-loom where Character is spun,

Whence issue moral threads that intertwine
To make the texture, and impart the tone,
Beneath the impress of a Power Divine
That harmonizes all, to whom is known
All potency for good or bad; and who
By Life's experience evolves the false, the true.

Lo! imaged clearly here, see tranquil Bliss
Calm as a dreamy Elm; unselfish Grace
That like an Aspen quivering to the kiss
Of plaintive zephyrs suns a radiant face
Athrill with sympathy; and pleased Desire,
With music like a swaying Birch, as from a windswept lyre.

Here fragrant Kindness like a perfumed Lime
Charms to herself a murmuring, grateful throng:
While vain Remorse, as if bemoaning crime,
Droops like a weeping Willow: and rude Wrong
Keen and red-fruited like a Holly, sheds
A deepending shadow as his prickly empire spreads;

And quaking Fear here blanches to each breath
Like silvery Sallows; and the pensive Pine
Rapt Melancholy broods like dusky Death,
Impervious to each sunbeam that would shine
And gender comfort; while in lonely gloom,
Bereavement like a shadowy Cedar haunts her tomb;

Here empty Passion bends to Destiny,
As blighted Lilacs to the chilly blast;
And hopeless Love aspires to the far sky,
Like a sad Cypress, lofty tho' downcast;
And wild Despair bewails, with arms up-tossed,
Like leafless Ash boughs, joys, once fresh, for ever lost.

Here see dark Hate, that, like a baneful Yew,
Sheds poison round: and chastened Grief now healed,
Which, youthful still, is scarred and silvered too
Like a pale Plane, whose bark is semi-peeled;
And Fortitude, that as a hardy Oak
Outlives fierce storms, nor totters till the woodman's stroke;

And more -- nay all -- all passions, and each state,
Whatever sways humanity, see here!
For most possess each mortal soon or late.
And some they soften, some, alas! they sear,
Perchance but for a while, since radiant Hope
Whispers that Righteous Love would limit else their scope.

I never watch the flashing sunbeams paint
A lovely Rainbow on the tearful gloom
Behind this graveyard, but I hold my plaint
For outcast souls, and trust that utter doom
Has shadowed none -- that Heaven in the far
Dim Future may for each the shining Gates unbar.

This Skyward Tower bears witness to the Might
That now welds all in a consummate whole --
The glorious Energy that, as the Light
Wherein all live and grow, plays round each soul;
At this but glancing, leaving that in shade,
Whose glow encircles all that flourish, all that fade.

Beauty! to Thee I sing! that Light art Thou:
'Tis but Thy phantom that suffuses Space,
And chequers Earth, save when I pierce as now,
Helped by some tranquil type, thro' Nature's grace
To Thee, its high Dispenser, and behold
In human Character thy traces manifold.

And when it saddens me that, spite of Thee
Naught lovely lingers long -- so much is vile,
So little fair in Man, I seem to see
A final burst of Glory, quenching guile,
One last blaze o'er mortality down-trod,
For Thou art Righteousness, and Love, and Christ, and God!





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