aug. 19, 1898.
god’s acre
there is a simple form of expedition of which i am very fond; that is the leisurely visiting of some rustic church in the neighbourhood. they are often very beautifully placed—sometimes they stand high on the ridges and bear a bold testimony to the faith; sometimes they lie nestled in trees, hidden in valleys, as if to show it is possible to be holy and beautiful, though unseen. sometimes they are the central ornament of a village street; there generally seems some simple and tender reason for their position; but the more populous their neighbourhood, the more they have suffered from the zeal of the restorer. what i love best of all is a church that stands a little apart, sheltered in wood, dreaming by itself, and guarding its tranquil and grateful secret—“secretum meum mihi,” it seems to say.
i like to loiter in the churchyard ground to step over the hillocks, to read the artless epitaphs[210] on slanting tombs; it is not a morbid taste, for if there is one feeling more than another that such a visit removes and tranquillises, it is the fear of death. death here appears in its most peaceful light; it seems so necessary, so common, so quiet and inevitable an end, like a haven after a troubled sea. here all the sad and unhappy incidents of mortality are forgotten, and death appears only in the light of a tender and dreamful sleep.
better still is the grateful coolness of the church itself; here one can trace in the epitaphs the fortunes of a family—one can see the graves of old squires who have walked over their own fields, talked with their neighbours, shot, hunted, eaten, drunk, have loved and been loved, and have yielded their place in the fulness of days to those that have come after them. very moving, too, are the evidences of the sincere grief, which underlies the pompous phraseology of the marble monument with its urns and cherubs. i love to read the long list of homely virtues attributed by the living to the dead in the depth of sorrow, and to believe them true. then there are records of untimely deaths,—the young wife, the soldier in[211] his prime, the boy or girl who have died unstained by life, and about whom clings the passionate remembrance of the happy days that are no more. such records as those do not preach the lesson of vanity and decay, but the lesson of pure and grateful resignation, the faith that the god who made the world so beautiful, and filled it so full of happiness, has surprises in store for his children, in a world undreamed of.
the monument
one monument in a church not far from golden end always brings tears to my eyes; there is a chapel in the aisle, the mausoleum of an ancient family, where mouldering banners and pennons hang in the gloom; in the centre of the chapel is an altar-tomb, on which lies the figure of a young boy, thirteen years old, the inscription says. he reclines on one arm, he has a delicately carved linen shirt that leaves the slender neck free, and he is wrapped in a loose gown; he looks upward toward the east, his long hair falling over his shoulders, his thin and shapely hand upon his knee. on each side of the tomb, kneeling on marble cushions on the ledge, are his father and mother, an earl and countess. the mother, in the stately costume of a bygone[212] court, with hair carefully draped, watches the face of the child with a look in which love seems to have cast out grief. the earl in armour, a strongly-built, soldier-like figure, looks across the boy’s knee at his wife’s face, but in his expression—i know not if it be art—there seems to be a look of rebellious sorrow, of thwarted pride. all his wealth and state could not keep his darling with him, and he does not seem to understand. there have they knelt, the little group, for over two centuries, waiting and watching, and one is glad to think that they know now whatever there is to know. outside the golden afternoon slants across the headstones, and the birds twitter in the ivy, while a full stream winds below through the meadows that once were theirs.
such a contemplation does not withdraw one from life or tend to give a false view of its energies; it does not forbid one to act, to love, to live; it only gilds with a solemn radiance the cloud that overshadows us all, the darkness of the inevitable end. face to face with the lacrim? rerum in so simple and tender a form, the heavy words memento mori fall upon the heart not as a sad and harsh interruption of wordly dreams and fancies, but as a deep pedal[213] note upon a sweet organ, giving strength and fulness and balance to the dying away of the last grave and gentle chord.
