Part 2 / Act 5 — SONNET ON VISITING BARRA CHURCH-YARD.

Deem not the spot unblest, though the church pile

Be moulder’d to decay; three mossy stones

Mark cells as hallow’d as the sculptured aisle,

Where villagers repose their weary bones;

The winds of heaven sigh moaning o’er their graves,

Where the long grass in mournful billows waves;

And when the moonlight sleeps upon yon knoll

The swain will pause, and think upon his soul!—

But most I love the blue-flower gleaming there,

Sprung from the ashes of some village maid,

Who blossom’d in life’s spring, chaste, young, and fair,

Till in Death’s arms she shrunk into a shade.

I’ll take a seedling from this lonely flower,

To be the moralist of my summer-bower.

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