Page:Poems, Volume 1, Coates, 1916.djvu/146



N Radnor Valley, from the world apart,

The little Church stands peaceful as of old,

Guarding her memories yet half untold,

Deep in the silent places of her heart.

Life comes, and passes by her, as it wills;

But musing on loved things evanishèd,

She keeps the generations of the dead,—

Herself unchanged amid her beauteous hills:

Unchanged, though full of change her days have been,

Since builded here, ere Washington was born,

She seemed the home of exiled hearts forlorn—

The open portal to hope's fair demesne.

Close as the ivy that adorns her walls,

So grateful thoughts have twined themselves and clung

About this lowly sanctuary, sprung

From that necessity which ever calls