A Summer Evening Churchyard

2The wind has swept from the wide atmosphere

3Each vapour that obscured the sunset's ray;

4And pallid Evening twines its beaming hair

5In duskier braids around the languid eyes of Day:

6Silence and Twilight, unbeloved of men,

7Creep hand in hand from yon obscurest glen.

8They breathe their spells towards the departing day,

9Encompassing the earth, air, stars, and sea;

10Light, sound, and motion own the potent sway,

11Responding to the charm with its own mystery.

12The winds are still, or the dry church-tower grass

13Knows not their gentle motions as they pass.

14Thou too, aereal Pile! whose pinnacles

15Point from one shrine like pyramids of fire,

16Obeyest in silence their sweet solemn spells,

17Clothing in hues of heaven thy dim and distant spire,

18Around whose lessening and invisible height

19Gather among the stars the clouds of night.

20The dead are sleeping in their sepulchres:

21And, mouldering as they sleep, a thrilling sound,

22Half sense, half thought, among the darkness stirs,

23Breathed from their wormy beds all living things around,

24And mingling with the still night and mute sky

25Its awful hush is felt inaudibly.

26Thus solemnized and softened, death is mild

27And terrorless as this serenest night:

28Here could I hope, like some inquiring child

29Sporting on graves, that death did hide from human sight

30Sweet secrets, or beside its breathless sleep

31That loveliest dreams perpetual watch did keep.