I
UPTHORPE-CUM-REGIS
The Minster and the Meadows
THE MINSTER
Strong as time, and as faith sublime,—clothed round with shadows of hopes and fears,
Nights and morrows, and joys and sorrows, alive with passion of prayers and tears,—
Stands the shrine that has seen decline eight hundred waxing and waning years.
Tower set square to the storms of air and change of season that blooms and glows,
Wall and roof of it tempest proof, and equal even to suns and snows,
Bright with riches of radiant niches and pillars smooth as a straight stem grows.
A. Swinburne.
ELEGY
Now fades the glimmering landscape on the sight,
And all the air a solemn stillness holds,
Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,
And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds;
. . . . . . . . . .
Beneath these rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade
Where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap
Each in his narrow cell forever laid,
The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.
. . . . . . . . . .