Blessings beforehand, ties of gratefulness,
The sound of glory ringing in our ears:
Without, our shame; within, our consciences;
Angels and grace, eternal hopes and fears.
Yet all these fences and their whole array
One cunning bosom-sin blows quite away.”
At the conclusion of this, without pause or change of tone, he continued: “From Parents, Schoolmasters, and Parsons, from Sundays and Bibles, from the Sound of Glory ringing in our ears, from Shame and Conscience, from Angels, Grace, and Eternal Hopes and Fears, Good Lord, or whatever Gods there be, deliver us.” This so elated him that he rode on at a great pace, and I lost him. For I dismounted at Fugglestone St. Peter, a very small, short-spired church with its churchyard, huddled into a narrow wayside patch. Church and churchyard are usually locked, so that you must get over the wall, if you wish to walk about on the shaven turf amongst ivy and periwinkle and the headstones of the Wiltshires, Bennetts, Lakes, Tabors, and Hollys, and to see middle-aged George Williams’s uncomfortable words (in 1842),—
“Dangers stand thick through all the ground
To push us to the tomb,