Shakespeare's England . ge, just glimmering through the haze, risesthe imperial citadel of Windsor, and elose bythe roadside a little child points to a gray spirepeering out of a nest of ivy, and tells me thatthis is Stoke-Pogis church. If peace dwells anywhere upon the earth itsdwelling-place is here. You come into thislittle churchyard by a pathway across the parkand through a wooden turnstile, and in onemoment the world is left behind and are the nodding elms; here is the yew-trees shade; here heaves the turf in many amouldering heap. All these graves seem veryold. The long g
Shakespeare's England . ge, just glimmering through the haze, risesthe imperial citadel of Windsor, and elose bythe roadside a little child points to a gray spirepeering out of a nest of ivy, and tells me thatthis is Stoke-Pogis church. If peace dwells anywhere upon the earth itsdwelling-place is here. You come into thislittle churchyard by a pathway across the parkand through a wooden turnstile, and in onemoment the world is left behind and are the nodding elms; here is the yew-trees shade; here heaves the turf in many amouldering heap. All these graves seem veryold. The long grass waves over them, andsome of the low stones that mark them areentirely shrouded in ivy. Many of the frailmemorials are made of wood. None of themis neglected or forlorn, but all of them seemto have been scattered here, in that sweet dis-order which is the perfection of rural never could have been any thought ofcreating this effect, yet here it remains, towin your heart: and here, amid tliis mournful. . ! It* e 1^ z | 5 r I - > t * • j ? z ~ =~ .= ,z -j ^- . 1 »>* J « J * | STOKE-POGIS AND GRAY 273 beauty, the little church nestles close to theground, while every tree that waves itsbranches around it, and every vine that clam-bers on its walls, seem to clasp it in thearms of love. Nothing breaks the silencebut the sighing of the wind in the great yew-tree at the church door,—beneath which wasthe poets favorite seat, and where the brownneedles, falling, through many an autumn, havemade a dense carpet on the turf. Now and thenthere is a faint rustle in the ivy; a fitful bird-note serves only to deepen the stillness; andfrom a rose-tree near at hand a few leavesflutter down, in soundless benediction on thedust beneath. Gray was laid in the same grave with hismother, the careful, tender mother of manychildren, one alone of whom, as he wroteupon her gravestone, had the misfortune tosurvive her. Their tomb,—a low, oblong,brick structure, covered with
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectshakespearewilliam15
