Classic Poem

Merrily shines the summer sun
Over the isle of Kent;
Merrily chasing, the ripples run,
Frolic the breezes in airy fun,
Robin, wren, mocking-bird every one
Join in the merriment.

But here in the oak-trees' solemn shade,
Where the sentinel cedars stand,
The old, old church that the fathers made
Looms forsaken and disarrayed,
Frowning on Maryland.

Where the voice of praise went ringing free,
The fox has made his home;
The wild-bee hives in the sacristy;
And the spectral moon looks in to see
The white-faced owl at his ministry
In the heart of the chancel gloom.

Where are the faces, grave and gay,
Of many a vanished year?
Cumbrous coaches and quaint array,
Priests and people, ah, where are they?
The tide of time has ebbed away,
And has left it stranded here.

Yet the days have been when its shadow fell
Far by the Severn side,
And the battered remnant that fought so well
Gladly came in that shade to dwell
Over the gleaming tide.

The bay is dotted with flecks of white,
For the fleet has come again.
But the Golden Lion is broad and bright,
And the village wakes to the stir of fight,
And the answer rings like a peal at night, —
" We will live or die like men. "

I see the Commonwealth standard fly,
And the cross that mocks the sun.
" Hey for Saint Mary's! " the Catholics cry;
And I hear the Puritans' strong reply,
" In the name of God, fall on. "

It passes. Out on the darkened air
Rings a peal of noisy glee;
'Mid the thunder's crash and the lightning's glare
The red-coats hold in the chancel bare
Their godless revelry.

Again there cometh a solemn boom
Over the glancing bay.
The great walls shudder, the hollow tomb
Adds its voice to that sound of gloom:
Brothers are dealing their brothers' doom
In the battle far away.

The wars they come, and the wars they go,
As the centuries journey by,
But the old church stands in weal or woe,
In the summer sun or the winter snow,
In the wild wind's sweep or the zephyr's flow,
With its stern, unwinking eye.

And gazing out from the sombre pines
Over the waters clear,
A deeper meaning my heart divines;
I seem to read in the battered lines
That something greater than stones and shrines
Is keeping a vigil here.