The Borough | Page 4

departed spirit bids farewell!
Thus shall you something of our BOROUGH know,
Far as a verse,
with Fancy's aid, can show.
Of Sea or River, of a Quay or Street,

The best description must be incomplete;
But when a happier theme
succeeds, and when
Men are our subjects and the deeds of men,

Then may we find the Muse in happier style,
And we may sometimes
sigh and sometimes smile.
LETTER II.
. . . . . . . . Festinat enim decurrere velox
Flosculus angustae
miseraeque brevissima vitae
Portio! dum bibimus, dum serta,
unguenta, puellas
Poscimus, obrepit non intellecta senectus.
JUVENAL, Satires
And when at last thy Love shall die,
Wilt thou receive his parting
breath?
Wilt thou repress each struggling sigh,
And cheer with
smiles the bed of death?
PERCY.

THE CHURCH.
Several Meanings of the word Church--The Building so called, here
intended--Its Antiquity and Grandeur--Columns and Aisles--The Tower:
the Stains made by Time compared with the mock antiquity of the
Artist--Progress of Vegetation on such Buildings--Bells--Tombs: one in
decay--Mural Monuments, and the Nature of their Inscriptions--An
Instance in a departed Burgess--Churchyard Graves--Mourners for the
Dead--A Story of a betrothed Pair in humble Life, and Effects of Grief
in the Survivor.

"WHAT is a Church?"--Let Truth and Reason speak,
They would
reply, "The faithful, pure, and meek;
From Christian folds, the one
selected race,
Of all professions, and in every place."
"What is a
Church?"--"A flock," our Vicar cries,
"Whom bishops govern and
whom priests advise;
Wherein are various states and due degrees,

The Bench for honour, and the Stall for ease;
That ease be mine,
which, after all his cares,
The pious, peaceful prebendary shares."

"What is a Church?"--Our honest Sexton tells,
"'Tis a tall building,
with a tower and bells;
Where priest and clerk with joint exertion
strive
To keep the ardour af their flock alive;
That, by its periods
eloquent and grave;
This, by responses, and a well-set stave:
These
for the living; but when life be fled,
I toll myself the requiem for the
dead."
'Tis to this Church I call thee, and that place
Where slept our fathers
when they'd run their race:
We too shall rest, and then our children
keep
Their road in life, and then, forgotten, sleep;
Meanwhile the
building slowly falls away,
And, like the builders, will in time decay.
The old Foundation--but it is not clear
When it was laid--you care not
for the year;
On this, as parts decayed by time and storms,
Arose
these various disproportion'd forms;
Yet Gothic all--the learn'd who
visit us
(And our small wonders) have decided thus:-
"Yon noble
Gothic arch," "That Gothic door;"
So have they said; of proof you'll
need no more.
Here large plain columns rise in solemn style,
You'd love the gloom
they make in either aisle;
When the sun's rays, enfeebled as they pass

(And shorn of splendour) through the storied glass,
Faintly display
the figures on the floor,
Which pleased distinctly in their place
before.
But ere you enter, yon bold tower survey,
Tall and entire, and
venerably gray,
For time has soften'd what was harsh when new,


And now the stains are all of sober hue;
The living stains which
Nature's hand alone,
Profuse of life, pours forth upon the stone:
For
ever growing; where the common eye
Can but the bare and rocky bed
descry;
There Science loves to trace her tribes minute,
The juiceless
foliage, and the tasteless fruit;
There she perceives them round the
surface creep,
And while they meet their due distinction keep;

Mix'd but not blended; each its name retains,
And these are Nature's
ever-during stains.
And wouldst thou, Artist! with thy tints and brush,
Form shades like
these? Pretender, where thy blush?
In three short hours shall thy
presuming hand
Th' effect of three slow centuries command?
Thou
may'st thy various greens and grays contrive;
They are not Lichens,
nor like ought alive;-
But yet proceed, and when thy tints are lost,

Fled in the shower, or crumbled by the frost;
When all thy work is
done away as clean
As if thou never spread'st thy gray and green;

Then may'st thou see how Nature's work is done,
How slowly true
she lays her colours on;
When her least speck upon the hardest flint

Has mark and form, and is a living tint;
And so embodied with the
rock, that few
Can the small germ upon the substance view.
Seeds, to our eyes invisible, will find
On the rude rock the bed that
fits their kind;
There, in the rugged soil, they safely dwell,
Till
showers and snows the subtle atoms swell,
And spread th' enduring
foliage;--then we trace
The freckled flower upon the flinty base;

These all increase, till in unnoticed years
The stony tower as gray
with age appears;
With coats of vegetation, thinly spread,
Coat
above coat, the living on the dead;
These then dissolve to dust, and
make a way
For bolder foliage, nursed by their decay:
The
long-enduring Ferns in time will all
Die and depose their dust upon
the wall;

Where the wing'd seed may rest, till many a flower
Show
Flora's triumph o'er the falling tower.
But ours yet stands, and has its Bells renown'd
For size magnificent

and solemn sound;
Each has its motto: some contrived to tell,
In
monkish rhyme, the uses of a