Old Church In An English Park.[426]

Crowning a flowery slope, it stood alone In gracious sanctity. A bright rill wound, Caressingly, about the holy ground; And warbled, with a never-dying tone, Amidst the tombs. A hue of ages gone Seem’d, from that ivied porch, that solemn gleam Of tower and cross, pale-quivering on the stream, O’er all th’ ancestral woodlands to be thrown-- And something yet more deep. The air was fraught With noble memories, whispering many a thought Of England’s fathers: loftily serene, They that had toil’d, watch’d, struggled, to secure, Within such fabrics, worship free and pure, Reign’d there, the o’ershadowing spirit of the scene.

Fawsley Park, near Daventry.