Classic Poem

Still stands the ancient meeting-house
Upon the village-green,
And white above the circling trees
The belfry tower is seen.

Uncolored through the simple panes
The common sunlight pours;
No Gothic arches spring above
The latched and painted doors.

Their thresholds witness to the tread
Of feet long since at rest
In yonder field of moss-grown slates
With Bible-text impressed.

No more at rise and set of sun
Is heard the numbered toll
That spoke to all the country round
The passing of a soul:

Yet still with every new-born week,
Across the meadows fair
And over all the upland farms,
Sounds the old call to prayer.

I walked again the village street
By absence made more dear;
That summer Sunday held the bloom
And fragrance of the year.

I followed with the worshippers
The ancient house within;
For me with all I saw and heard
Was mingled what had been.

For memory had new-kindled love,
And love had quickened faith;
I lived that hour within a world
That knew not change and death.

I minded not the preacher's theme,
Nor caught the words of prayer;
My thought had passed within the veil
And walked with spirits there.

The faithful shepherd of the flock,
Whose years knew such increase,
Who led in wisdom's simple ways
And by the streams of peace;

The wise and upright citizen,
To each good cause allied,
Who brightened more an honored name
Through all the country-side;

And souls that well had borne their part,
And little children fair; —
Their unforgotten faces gleamed
In the illumined air.

I love the minster's vaulted roof,
Its walls of old renown,
Where sculptured marbles voice the past
And windowed saints look down:

Nor less I feel our Hebrew strain,
Distrustful still of art,
That lifts to the Invisible
Immediate the heart.

For inward more than outward is,
The soul than any shrine;
Alone our living love and trust
The altar make divine.

Long may the ancient meeting-house
Rise from the village-green,
And over all the country round
Its belfried tower be seen:

Still may the call to praise and prayer
Be heard each Sunday morn,
And bind in growing faith the past
With ages yet unborn!