Selected Poems of Bernard Barton, the 'Quaker Poet'. Christopher Stokes W.

how simple the worship he taught 25

      To her, who enquir’d by that fountain,

      If Jehovah at Solyma’s Shrine would be sought?—

      Or ador’d on Samaria’s mountain?—

      Woman!—believe me, the hour is near,

      When He, if ye rightly would hail Him, 30

      Will neither be worshipp’d exclusively here,

      Nor yet at the altar of Salem.

      For GOD is a Spirit!—and they who aright

      Would perform the pure worship he loveth,

      In the heart’s holy temple will seek with delight 35

      That Spirit the Father approveth.

      And many that Prophecy’s truth can declare,

      Whose bosoms have livingly known it;

      Whom GOD hath instructed to worship him there,

      And convinc’d that his mercy will own it. 40

      The Temple which Solomon built to his Name

      Now lives but in History’s story;

      Extinguish’d long since is its altar’s bright flame,

      And vanish’d each glimpse of its glory:—

      But the Christian—made wise by a wisdom divine, 45

      Though all human fabrics may falter,

      Still finds in his heart a far holier shrine

      Where the fire burns unquench’d on the Altar!

       PLAYFORD. A DESCRIPTIVE FRAGMENT.—1817

      Hast thou a heart to prove the power

      Of a landscape lovely, soft, and serene?

      Go—when its fragrance hath left the flower,

      When the leaf is no longer glossy and green;

      When the clouds are careering across the sky, 5

      And the rising winds tell the tempest nigh,

      Though the slanting sunbeams are lingering still,

      On the tower’s grey top, and the side of the hill;—

      Then go to the village of Playford, and see

      If it be not a lovely spot; 10

      And, if Nature can boast of charms for thee,

      Thou wilt love it, and leave it not,

      Till the shower shall warn thee no longer to roam,

      And then thou wilt carry its picture home;

      To feed thy fancy when far away, 15

      A source of delight for a future day.

      Its sloping green is verdant and fair,

      And between its tufts of trees

      Are white cottages, peeping here and there,

      The pilgrim’s eye to please:— 20

      A white farm-house may be seen on its brow,

      And its grey old hall in the valley below,

      By a moat encircled round;

      And from the left verge of its hill you may hear,

      If you chance on a Sabbath to wander near 25

      A sabbath-breathing sound:

      ’Tis the sound of the bell which is slowly ringing

      In that tower, which lifts its turrets above

      The wood-fring’d bank, where birds are singing,

      And from spray to spray are fearlessly springing, 30

       As if in a lonely and untrodden grove;

      For the grey church-tower is far over head;

      And so deep is the winding lane below,

      They hear not the sound of the traveller’s tread,

      If a traveller there should chance to go:— 35

      But few pass there, for most who come

      At the bell’s loud summons have left their home,

      That bell which is tolling so slow.

      And grassy and green may the path be seen

      To the village-church that leads; 40

      For its glossy hue is as verdant to view

      As you see it in lowly meads.

      And he who the ascending pathway scales,

      By the gate above, and the mossy pales,

      Will find the trunk of a leafless tree, 45

      All bleak, and barren, and bare;—

      Yet it keeps its station, and seems to be

      Like a silent monitor there:—

      Though wasted and worn, it smiles in the ray

      Of the bright warm sun, on a sunny day; 50

      And more than once I have seen

      The moonbeams sleep on its barkless trunk,

      As calmly and softly as ever they sunk

      On its leaves, when its leaves were green;

      And it seem’d to rejoice in their light the while, 55

      Reminding my heart of the patient smile

      Resignation can wear in the hour of grief,

      When it finds in Religion a source of relief,

      And stript of delights which earth had given,

      Still shines in the beauty it borrows from heaven! 60

      But the bell hath ceas’d to ring;—

      And the birds no longer sing;—

      And the grasshopper’s carol is heard no more;—

      Yet sounds of praise and prayer

      The wandering breezes bear, 65

      Like the murmur of waves on the ocean shore.

      All else is still!—but silence can be

      More eloquent far than speech;

      And the valley below, and that tower and tree,

      Through the eye to the heart can reach. 70

      Could the sage’s creed, the historian’s tale,

      Utter language like that of yon silent vale?

      As it basks in the beams of the sabbath-day,

      And rejoices in Nature’s reviving ray;

      While its outstretch’d meadows, and autumn-ting’d trees 75

      Seem enjoying the sun, and inhaling the breeze.

      And hath not that church a lovely look

      In the page of this landscape’s open book?

      Like a capital letter, which catches the eye

      Of the reader, and says a new chapter is nigh; 80

      So its tower, by which the horizon is broken,

      Of prayer, and of praise, a beautiful token,

      Lifts up its head, and silently tells

      Of a world hereafter, where happiness dwells.

      While that