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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=341435" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Outside The Village Church</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0">``The old Church doors stand open wide,<br>Though neither bells nor anthems peal.<br>Gazing so fondly from outside,<br>Why do you enter not and kneel?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">``It is the sunset hour when all<br>Begin to feel the need to pray,<br>Upon our common Father call<br>To guard the night, condone the day.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">``Is it proud scorn, or humble doubt,<br>That keeps you standing, lingering, there;<br>Half in the Church, and half without,<br>Midway betwixt the world and prayer?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">``No meeter moment could there be<br>For man to talk alone with God.<br>The careless sexton has, you see,<br>Shouldered his spade, and homeward trod.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">``The Vicar's daily round is done;<br>His back just sank below the brow.<br>He passed the porches, one by one,<br>That line the hamlet street, and now</div><div style="margin:10px 0">``He, in his garden, cons the page,<br>And muses on to-morrow's text.<br>The homebound rustic counts his wage,<br>The same last week, the same the next.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">``Nor priest nor hind are you, but each<br>Alike is welcome here within;<br>Both they who learn, and they who teach,<br>Have secret sorrow, secret sin.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">``Enter, and bare your inmost sore;<br>Enter, and weep your stain away;<br>Leave doubt and darkness at the door;<br>Come in and kneel, come in and pray.''</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Such were the words I seemed to hear,<br>By no one uttered, but alack!<br>The voice of many a bygone year,<br>Striking the church, and echoing back.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I entered not, but on a stone<br>Sate, that recorded some one's loss;<br>But name and date no more were shown,<br>The deep-cut lines were smooth with moss.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Below were longsome tags of rhyme,<br>But what, you could not now surmise.<br>Alas! alas! that death and time<br>Should overgrow love's eulogies.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Round me was Death that plainly spoke<br>The hopes and aims that life denied;<br>The curious pomp of simple folk,<br>The pedantry of rustic pride.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Some slept in square sepulchral caves,<br>Some were stretched flat, and some inurned;<br>And there were fresh brown baby graves,<br>Resembling cradles overturned.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">From where I sate I still could watch<br>The old oak pews, the altar white.<br>Gable and oasthouse, tile and thatch,<br>Smiled softly in the sunset light.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">From here and there a cottage roof,<br>Spires of blue vapour 'gan to steal;<br>To eyes of love a heavenly proof<br>The mother warmed the evening meal.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">No more the mill-stream chafed and churned;<br>The wheel hung still, the meal lay whole;<br>From marsh and dyke the rooks returned,<br>And circled round and round the toll.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The lambs were mute, the sheep were couched,<br>The hop-poles bent 'neath leaf and bine;<br>Adown the road the vagrant slouched,<br>And glanced up at the alehouse sign.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Again I heard the unseen voice:<br>``Why do you come not in and rest?<br>Whether you grieve or you rejoice,<br>You here will be a welcome guest.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">``To Heaven it is the half-way house,<br>Where hope can feed, and anguish may<br>Recline its limbs and rest its brows,<br>With simple thanks for ample pay.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">``Was it not here you got the name<br>Which is of you so close a part,<br>That, uttered, it hath magic claim<br>To flush love's cheek, to flood love's heart?</div><div style="margin:10px 0">``Here too it was, when youth confessed<br>The weariness of random ways,<br>And felt a surging in the breast<br>For faithful nights and fruitful days,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">``You came with one who, conquering fear<br>When love surprised first thought to fly,<br>Acknowledged with a tender tear<br>The sweetness of captivity.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">``And here 'twill be when you have ta'en<br>Last look of love, last look of Spring,<br>When hearts for you will yearn in vain,<br>And vain for you the birds will sing,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">``That shuffling feet and slow will come,<br>With cumbrous coffin, gloomy pall,<br>And, while within you moulder dumb,<br>That prayers will rise and tears will fall.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">``And should Death haply prove your friend,<br>And what in life was scorned should save,<br>Hither it is that feet will wend,<br>To read the name upon your grave.''</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I heard the voice no more. The rooks<br>Had ceased to float, had ceased to caw;<br>The sunlight lingered but in nooks,<br>And, gazing toward the west, I saw,</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Beyond the pasture's withered bents,<br>Upstanding hop, recumbent fleece,<br>And sheaves of wheat, like weathered tents,<br>A twilight bivouac of peace.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">Into itself the voice withdrew.<br>A something subtle all around<br>Came floating on the rising dew,<br>And sweetness took the place of sound.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">No word of mine, although my heart<br>Rebelled, the scented stillness shook;<br>But silence seemed to take my part,<br>Thus mildly answering mild rebuke:</div><div style="margin:10px 0">``'Tis true I have to you not brought<br>My eager or despondent mood,<br>But still by wood and stream have sought<br>The sanctity of solitude.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">``But as a youth who quits his home<br>To range in tracts of freër fame,<br>However far or wide he roam,<br>Dwells fondly on his mother's name;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">``So bear me witness, dear old Church,<br>Although apart our ritual be,<br>I ne'er have breathed one word to smirch<br>The Creed that bore and suckled me.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">``Not mine presumptuous thought to cope<br>With sage's faith, with saint's belief,<br>Or proudly mock the humble hope<br>That solaced the Repentant Thief.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">``I do not let the elms, that shut<br>My garden in from world without,<br>Exclude your sacred presence, but<br>I lop them when they shoot and sprout;</div><div style="margin:10px 0">``That I at eve, that I at dawn,<br>That I, when noons are warm and still,<br>Lying or lingering on the lawn,<br>May see your tower upon the hill.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">``But when Faith grows a sophist's theme,<br>And chancels ring with doubt and din,<br>I sometimes think that they who seem<br>The most without, are most within.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">``The name you gave, that name I bear;<br>The bond you sealed, I sacred keep;<br>And, when my brain is dust and air,<br>Let me within your precincts sleep.''</div><div style="margin:10px 0">The sexton came and scanned once more<br>The neat square pit of smooth blue clay,<br>Then turned the key and locked the door,<br>And so, like him, I went my way.</div><div style="margin:10px 0">I had the summons not obeyed;<br>I had nor knelt nor uttered word;<br>But somehow felt that I had prayed,<br>And somehow felt I had been heard.</div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><br />poem by <a href="http://en.citatepedia.ro/by.php?a=Alfred+Austin">Alfred Austin</a><div class=q>
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<script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_widget.js#pubid=citatepedia" async="async"></script><div style="display:inline-block" class="addthis_sharing_toolbox" data-url="http://en.citatepedia.ro/comments.php?id=341435" data-title="Outside The Village Church de Alfred Austin" data-description="``The old Church doors stand open wide,
Though neither bells nor anthems peal.
Gazing so fondly from outside,
Why do you enter not and kneel?

``It is the sunset hour when all
Begin to feel the need to pray,
Upon our common Father call
To guard th..."></div>
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