In the dark coppice, where fairies dwell,
Where the wren and the red-breast build;
Along the green lanes, through dingle and dell,
O'er bracken and brake, and moss-covered fell,
Where the primroses pathways gild.
Hither and thither the tiny feet
Of children gaily sped,
In the cool grey dawn of the morning sweet,
Plucking wild flowers—an offering meet
To garnish the graves of the dead.
Out from the beaten pathway, quaint and white,
The village church—a crumbling pile—is seen;
It stands in solitude midst mounds of green
Like ancient dame in moss-grown cloak bedight.
The mantling ivy clings around its form—
The patient growth of many and many a year.
As though a gentle hand had placed it there
To shield the tottering morsel from the storm.
A sombre cypress rears its mournful head
Above the porch, through which, in days gone by,
Young men and maidens sped so hopefully,
That now lie slumbering with the silent dead:
The silent dead, that round the olden pile
Crumble to dust as though they ne'er had been.
Whose graven annals, writ o'er billows green,
Though voiceless, tell sad stories all the while.
And as they speak in speechless eloquence,
The waving shadows of the cypress fall
In spectral patches on the quaint old wall,
Nodding in wise and ghostly reticence
In silent sanction at the stories told
By each decrepit, wizen-featured stone,
That seems to muse, like ancient village crone
Belost in thought o'er memories strange and old.
Outside the stunted boundary, a row
Of poplars tall—beside whose haughty mien
And silky rustlings of whose robes of green
The lowly church still humbler seems to grow.
A-near the lych-gate in the crumbling wall,
A spreading oak, grotesque and ancient, stands,
Like aged monk extending prayerful hands
In silent benediction over all,