Old Church in an English Park

Crowning a flowery slope, it stood alone
In gracious sanctity. A bright rill wound,
Caressingly, about the holy ground;
And warbled, with a never-dying tone,
Amidst the tombs. A hue of ages gone
Seem’d, from that ivied porch, that solemn gleam
Of tower and cross, pale-quivering on the stream,
O’er all th’ ancestral woodlands to be thrown--
And something yet more deep. The air was fraught
With noble memories, whispering many a thought
Of England’s fathers: loftily serene,
They that had toil’d, watch’d, struggled, to secure,
Within such fabrics, worship free and pure,
Reign’d there, the o’ershadowing spirit of the scene.