Poems :: :: University of Virginia Library

There is a quiet churchyard, green and lone,
Within the bounds of Hertford's pleasant shire,
Bedeck'd with many a quaintly sculptured stone,
Marking the grave of yeoman, lord or squire;
But more than all one tomb arrests the eye,—
A mouldering tomb, engraved on which you trace
The name of one whose rank on earth was high,—
A dame of noble race.

And yet the tomb shews scanty marks of care
To guard it from the grasp of swift decay,
Not such as tombs of nobles mostly bear,
Preserved while generations pass away.
The crumbling stone has never been repair'd,
The worn inscription ne'er rechisell'd o'er;
It seems a place accurst, which none have dared
To reverence or restore.

But what doth most amaze the passer-by
Is that from out the space which doth imprison
The mortal dust,—their branches broad and high
Each mixt with each,—ten leafy trees have risen;
Seven ash-stems their projecting arms shoot forth
Across the southern wall of that strange tomb,
Three broad-leaf'd planes, umbrageous, o'er the north
Diffuse funereal gloom.

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In these embosom'd and by these embraced
The tomb almost is from the soil upborne,
While the stout branches, stoutly interlaced,
Between and through the stones their path have torn,
Disjointing part from part;—where once hath stood,
To guard the spot, an iron palisade,
Rent bars, imbedded in the tough ash wood,
Attest the havock made.

You might suppose that Nature, for some sin
Wrought in the flesh by her now buried there,
Refused her that last resting-place, within
Her mother-bosom, which the meanest share;
Whence from the soil, at one prolific birth,
Those trees, joint offspring of her womb's unrest,
Emerged, to thrust and jostle out of earth
That loath'd, intrusive guest.

The story runs (a story which hath found
Belief through nigh two centuries of time,)
That she whose bones now moulder in that ground
Was one whose soul was all infect with crime;
The godless daughter of her house, she held
Through life a wilful and rebellious way,
By no coercion to be tamed or quell'd,
Of laws which men obey.

A bold, bad woman,—one who scorn'd to shroud
Her wickedness, beneath a thin disguise
Of outward seemings, from the observant crowd,
Or cheat with specious shows the good and wise.
No creed her lips profess'd; she never knelt
Before the altar of the Christian's God,
Nor feign'd a fear her soul had never felt
Of His rebuke or rod.

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But unbelieving, scoff'd at things unseen,
Content all bliss hereafter to forego,
So she might rule and revel like a Queen
In the brief fulness of this world below;
To all her passions gave full range and scope,
Oppress'd and plunder'd, unrestrain'd in lust,
Swoln with ambition, reckless of all hope
When dust should turn to dust.

So pass'd her threescore years of life away,
And now the end of all was plainly near;
Stretch'd on her dying bed at last she lay,
Contemptuous still of hope, devoid of fear;
Relations, friends, the pastor of the fold
Vainly of all persuasion tried the force,
To wake, within that nature fierce and bold,
One pang of true remorse.

“Nay,” she made answer, “I have lived my life
Like one above all bonds which bind the weak;
With priestcraft's vile impostures still at strife,
Nor will I now a late acceptance seek
From powers (if such there be) so long defied;
Let those who will, a final judgment dread,—
Be it mine to sleep for ever side by side
With the unreturning dead.

“To me, be death an everlasting sleep;
Of soul and sense annihilation blank;
Whate'er I am let earth for ever keep,
O'ergrown by weeds and mosses green and rank.
Or if (which I believe not) there should be
A resurrection, let my grave a sign
Bring forth—a cluster'd growth of tree with tree,
Around my tomb to twine.”

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She died,—they bore her body to the grave,
And o'er it raised the tomb which still is there;
But lo! the sign! green leaves above it wave,
And whisper sadly to the summer air;
(For heaven and earth her wild defiance heard)—
Ten twisted stems, forth darting from the soil,
Embrace the tomb wherein she lies interr'd,
As with a serpent's coil.

'Twere no irreverent fancy to suppose
(What fond poetic fables feign'd of yore)
That those strong trunks and clustering boughs enclose
The spirit housed in fleshly frame no more;
That in those sighs, which seem to load the gale,
When through the leaves the midnight winds complain,
Is heard the bitter and despairing wail
Of that lost soul in pain.

Meanwhile the rustics hold the place accurst,
Still o'er all hearts it breathes a spectral gloom,
Scarce soften'd by the buds which o'er it burst,—
Bright types of life emerging from the tomb;
Not reverence claim'd for old patrician race,
Not all the tenderness to woman due
Can bless the grave of one to Heaven's high grace
And nature's voice untrue.

Alas! but what, if God-dethroning thought
(That charter'd troubler of this latter day)
From court to cot should silently have wrought,
By slow approaches, its insidious way?
What, if the hope, religiously enshrined
As yet within the soul of almost all,
Like some strong fortress sapp'd and undermined,
Should topple o'er and fall?

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What if the creed, bequeath'd to son from sire,
Like some unholy thing, aside be thrown?
What if yon church, from chancel floor to spire,
Be shatter'd and disjointed, stone from stone?
And men no more before Christ's altar pray,
But seek that tomb, which now in fear they shun,
Their godless homage of applause to pay
To that audacious one?

“She was, in sooth, a herald of the light
Which now enlightens every soul of man;
She fought and conquer'd, in her single might,
Time-rooted error, ere our strife began.
Blest be the boughs which cluster o'er her grave,
Fresh emblems of the vigorous faith which lay
Deep in that heart so noble, free and brave,”—
Thus haply men may say.

But then o'er England, in its breadth and length,
The plague of social sickness will have spread;
The Queen of nations will be shorn of strength,
The life of life in her great heart be dead;
And through the trembling cities of the land
Her guardian angel's voice, in loud lament,
Proclaim that now from her sin-palsied hand
The sceptre shall be rent.

Must this be so—or may the plague be stay'd?
O ye who guard the sacred shrines of truth;
O ye who train, in academic shade,
The mind and spirit of our English youth;
And ye who, bound by ministerial vows,
Dispense, in plenteous streams, the living word,—
Arrest—avert—while yet the time allows—
The curse which brings the sword!