In its white stillness! when the shade
Doth glimmeringly in sunshine fade
From our embrace, how dim appears
This world's life through a mist of tears!
Vain hopes! blind sorrows! needless fears!

Such is the scene around me now:
A little churchyard on the brow
Of a green pastoral hill;
Its sylvan village sleeps below,
And faintly here is heard the flow
Of Woodburn's summer rill;
A place where all things mournful meet,
And yet the sweetest of the sweet,
The stillest of the still!
With what a pensive beauty fall
Across the mossy, mouldering wall
That rose-tree's clustered arches! See
The robin-redbreast warily,
Bright through the blossoms, leaves his nest:
Sweet iugrate! through the winter blest
At the firesides of men--but shy
Through all the sunny summer-hours,
He hides himself among the flowers
In his own wild festivity.
What lulling sound, and shadow cool
Hangs half the darkened churchyard o'er,
From thy green depths so beautiful
Thou gorgeous sycamore!
Oft hath the holy wine and bread