And the sweet Cowley, with impatient eye
To see these walls, pay the sad visit here,
And drop the tribute of an hourly tear.
Still I behold some melancholy scene,
With many a pensive thought and many a sigh between.
Two days ago we took the evening air,
I and my grief.
Amidst the exaggerations, however, which a prosaic age may fancy it detects, there is no reason for including expressions which it would certainly be impossible to appropriately use now; the poet calls upon the dusky woods and echoing hills, the flowery vales overgrown with thorns, the brook that runs warbling by, the lowing herd, and the moaning turtle, the curling vine with its amorous folds, and the stately elms, the reverent growth of ancient years, standing tall and naked to the blustering rage of the mad winds. These are images which must have been simply natural and appropriate when the piece was written; all is changed, entirely changed now, unless some exception be made for the elms which are, or were, recently standing. The death of this amiable, excellent, and promising young man stands out as probably the most intense grief of Watts’ life. As there was a community of taste, leisure for the indulgence of the pursuits of the intellect and the heart, and the strong wish to gratify the instincts of a noble nature, it is not wonderful that Watts poured out his feelings in so lengthy a poem.
The young man appears to have come of a high-spirited family; his father, John Gunston, befriended many of the ministers when they fell beneath the arm of persecution; and when the eminent Dr. Manton was imprisoned in the Gate House for refusing the Oxford Oath, the Lady Broughton, his keeper, placing the keys at his disposal, allowed him an opportunity of visiting his friend, Mr. Gunston, at Newington. Thus we have the early and tender connection of Watts with this village. And not long since the old house was standing. An amiable and accomplished man of our time writes, in a letter dated May, 1840: “On my return to town I stopped at Stoke Newington, and paid a promised visit to an old friend and colleague at Abney House, where he has charge of the literary education of some twenty candidates for the ministry. The house—that in which Dr. Watts lived for more than a generation, composed his precious hymns, and at last died—afforded me, in its noble antique apartments, in its still rich embellishments, its surrounding grounds (said to contain the bones of Oliver Cromwell), and, above all, its sacred associations, more delight than I can express.”[39]
On the spot where the house stood, with its beautiful grounds, gardens, and trees extending round, is now laid out the Abney Park Cemetery, amongst whose forests of tombs may be detected innumerable names very dear to the memories of modern Nonconformists: since the closing of Bunhill Fields, Abney Park Cemetery has become what it was, a sort of santa croce, or campo santo of revered and hallowed dust.