Page:Over fen and wold; (IA overfenwold00hissiala).pdf/368

 and still they stand in their old places, watching over the slumbering dead around. But I am rhapsodising, and nowadays this is a literary sin. I acknowledge my transgression and will endeavour to atone for it by merely being descriptive for the future.

On the gable of the porch of Somersby church is an old-fashioned sun-dial—useful on sunny days to reproach laggard worshippers. This bears the not very original motto, "Time passeth." A better motto we noted inscribed on an old Fenland country garden sun-dial as follows, and which struck us as fresh:—

A clock the time may wrongly tell, I never, if the sun shine well.

Within the porch is a well-preserved holy-water stoup.

The interior of the church unfortunately shows signs of restoration, in a mild form truly, but still unwelcome as robbing the fabric of some of its ancient character. Surely of all churches in the wild Wolds this one might have been simply maintained. Possibly the poet's wide renown has been the cause of its undoing; well may Byron sing of "the fatal gift of fame." The church looks not now the same as when Dr. Tennyson preached, and his son, who was to make the family name familiar throughout the world, worshipped there. The obtrusive red-tiled pavement "that rushes at you," to employ an expressive artist's term; the over-neat seats—of varnished pine, if I remember aright—are clean and decent, but they hardly harmonise with the simple