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And place our trophies where men kneel
To Heaven!-but Heaven rebukes my zeal
The cause of Truth and human weal,
O God above!

Transfer it from the sword's appeal

To Peace and Love.

Peace, Love! the cherubim, that join
Their spread wings o'er Devotion's shrine,
Prayers sound in vain, and temples shine,

Where they are not,

The heart alone can make divine
Religion's spot.

To incantations dost thou trust,
And pompous rites in domes august?

See moldering stones and metal's rust

Belie the vaunt,

That man can bless one pile of dust

With chime or chaunt.

The ticking wood-worm mocks thee, man!

Thy temples,-creeds themselves grow
But there's a dome of nobler span,

A temple given

Thy faith, that bigots dare not ban,-
Its

space is Heaven!

Its roof, star-pictured Nature's ceiling,
Where, trancing the rapt spirit's feeling,
And God himself to man revealing,

The harmonious spheres

wan

Make music, though unheard their pealing
By mortal ears.

Fair stars! are not your beings pure?
Can sin, can death, your worlds obscure?
Else why so swell the thoughts at your
Aspect above?

Ye must be Heavens that make us sure
Of heavenly love!

!

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And underneath the green graves rest;

And through the place, with slow footfalls, With snowy cambric on his breast,

The old gray Vicar crawls.

And close at hand, to see him come,
Clustering at the playground gate,
The urchins of the school-house, dumb
And bashful, hang the head and wait;
The little maidens curtsey deep,

The boys their forelocks touch meanwhile,
The Vicar sees them, half asleep,

And smiles a sleepy smile.

Slow as the hand on the clock's face,
Slow as the white cloud in the sky,
He cometh now with tottering pace
To the old vicarage hard by;
Smothered it stands in ivy leaves,

Laurels and yews make dark the ground;
The swifts that build beneath the eaves
Wheel in still circles round.

And from the portal, green and dark,
He glances at the church-clock old-
Gray soul! why seek his eyes to mark
The creeping of that finger cold?
He cannot see, but still as stone

He pauses, listening for the chime,
And hears from that green tower intone

The eternal voice of Time.

Robert Buchanan [1841—1901]

THE OLD CHURCHYARD OF BONCHURCH

THE churchyard leans to the sea with its dead,

It leans to the sea with its dead so long.

Do they hear, I wonder, the first bird's song,
When the winter's anger is all but fled;

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