Page:The Excursion, Wordsworth, 1814.djvu/464

438 The silent grave, I would have stray'd:

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..

—wandered forth, where the cold dew of heaven

Lay on the humbler graves around, what time

The pale moon gazed upon the turfy mounds,

Pensive, as though like me, in lonely muse,

'Twere brooding on the Dead inhum'd beneath.

There, while with him, the holy Man of Uz,

O'er human destiny I sympathiz'd,

Counting the long, long periods prophecy

Decrees to roll, ere the great day arrives

Of resurrection, oft the blue-eyed Spring

Had met me with her blossoms, as the Dove

Of old, return'd with olive leaf, to cheer

The Patriarch mourning o'er a world destroy'd:

And I would bless her visit; for to me

'Tis sweet to trace the consonance that links

As one, the works of Nature and the word

Of God."——.

A Village Church-yard, lying as it does in the lap of Nature, may indeed be most favourably contrasted with that of a Town of crowded Population; and Sepulture therein combines many of the best tendencies which belong to the mode practised by the Ancients, with others peculiar to itself. The sensations of pious cheerfulness, which attend the celebration of the Sabbath-day in rural places, are profitably chastised by the sight of the Graves of Kindred and Friends, gathered together in that general Home towards which the thoughtful yet happy Spectators themselves are journeying. Hence a Parish Church, in the stillness of the Country, is a visible centre of a