Page:Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire.djvu/374

 carved heads and graceful gables, the low grey tower patched with brick, just across the road, (for the "noble tall towered churches" spoken of in The Memoir are not in this part of the county,) and the pre-Reformation (not "Norman") cross near the porch, all these may still be seen much as they were one hundred years ago.

True, the church has been lately put in good repair, and a fine bronze bust of the poet placed in the chancel. This was unveiled, and the church re-opened on Sunday, April 6, 1911, being the fulfilment of the plan projected on the occasion of the centenary celebration two years previously. On that Sunday the little church was more than filled with neighbours and relatives who listened to sermons from the Bishop of Lincoln and the Rev. Canon Rawnsley. Next day was Bank Holiday, and in a field near the rectory hundreds of Lincolnshire folk of every kind—farmers, tradespeople, gentry, holiday makers—assembled to do honour to their own Lincolnshire poet, and for a couple of hours listened intently to speeches about him and laughed with a will at the humours of the "Northern Farmer" read in their own native dialect, just as the poet intended; whilst the relatives of the poet and those who were familiar with his works looked with glad interest upon a scene of rural beauty which brought to the mind the descriptions in The Lady of Shalott, seeing on the slopes before them the promise of crops soon to "clothe the wold and meet the sky," while far away to the left stretched the valley which pointed to Horncastle, the home of the poet's bride, and on the right was the churchyard where the stern "owd Doctor" rests, and the church where for five and twenty years he ministered. The whole was a remarkable assemblage and a remarkable tribute, and the setting was a picture of quiet English rural life, one which the poet himself must often have actually looked out upon, and such as he has himself beautifully described in The Palace of Art:—

"And one an English home—gray twilight pour'd On dewy pastures, dewy trees, Softer than sleep—all things in order stored,  A haunt of ancient Peace."

The spirit of the poet seemed still to be a haunting presence in the place, and as then, so now and for all time his works speak to us. But three-quarters of a century have passed