Page:Walks in the Black Country and its green border-land.pdf/108

94 external is more impressive than its interior aspect, as it looks to be larger at a little distance than it really is. Perhaps this impression is produced by the massive tower and its tall and graceful spire. Both pedestal and statue are as graceful as colossal. Its "God's Acre" holds the dust of a dozen generations, and is filled to its walls with monuments of every grade and shade. While walking among them with Capern, the postman poet, an incident occurred which I hoped would stir his muse to some appropriate reflections. The clock, high and deep in the old church tower, tolled the funeral of four sunny hours, as if it were never to greet the birth of another in time. The sound came out into the still air through those massive walls with the silvery quavers of centuries. It seemed to take hold of the deceased hours by their middle minutes, and to breathe over them a plaintive requiem, half sigh and half sob, melting away in a querulous murmur over the cross streets of human graves surrounding the church. While we listened thoughtfully to the murmur as it fluttered outward upon the still blue air, a sharp, piercing screech split the silence of nature, startling the sleeping leaves to a quiver of alarm. What a transition! There, on a high embanked railway just across the brook, was the huge black serpent of a coal train, with all its loose vertebra