Classic Poem

See where the stones are worn beside the street
By leisured, prosperous, long-departed feet,
And swept again, already smooth and neat,
As swaying shadows of the lilac fall
Over the crumbled, secret garden wall.
Behind that knocker and that kind, green door
Aunt Sarah lived in eighteen-thirty-four.
By then, her father, Robert Pearce, was dead:
‘He loved the very stones of Lyne,’ she said,
And now each ledge and cornice seem to rise,
Washed by the love of long-acquainted eyes.

Where the church towers to the equal sky,
By the paved path, look where the Pearces lie
Beneath their dignity of tabled stone,
Still by the passers-by revered and known,
And grass grows greenly, as it surely must
From sober, righteous and godly dust.
Friend, like an Orpheus of our latter days,
On this dear seemliness you dare not gaze
Too long or longingly. I warn you, no!
Now take the mass-made motor-bus and go.