Page:Pocahontas, and Other Poems.djvu/153

 THE LONELY CHURCH.

��IT stood among the chesnuts, its white spire And slender turrets pointing where man's heart Should oftener turn. Up went the wooded cliffs, Abruptly beautiful, above its head, Shutting with verdant screen the waters out, That just beyond in deep sequestered vale Wrought out their rocky passage. Clustering roofs And varying sounds of village industry Swelled from its margin, while the busy loom, Replete with radiant fabrics, told the skill Of the prompt artisan.

But all around

The solitary dell, where meekly rose That consecrated church, there was no voice Save what still Nature in her worship breathes, And that unspoken lore with which the dead Do commune with the living. There they lay, Each in his grassy tenement, the sire Of many winters, and the noteless babe Over whose empty cradle, night by night,

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