Page:Dreams and Images.djvu/91

'Tis upon us—father and kindly friend,
Holy and cheerful host—the unbidden guest
You welcomed and the souls you would amend,
The weight of sorrow rests.

From Sarum in the mesh of her five streams,
Her idle belfries and her glittering vanes,
We are clomb to where the cloud-race dusks and gleams
On turf of upland plains.

Southward the road through juniper and briar
Clambers the down, untrodden and unworn
Save where some flock pitted the chalky mire
With little feet at dawn.

Twice in a week the hooded carrier's lamp,
Flashing on wayside flints and grasses, spills
Its misty radiance where the dews lie damp
Among the untended hills;

Here lies the hamlet ringed with grassy mound
And brambled barrow where, superbly dead,
The dust of pagans turned to holy ground
Beneath your humble tread.

Here we descend at drooping dusk the side
Of the stony down beneath the planted ring
Of beeches where you showed with pastoral pride
The folded lambs in spring;

Here pull at eve the self-same bell that hastened
Your rough-shod feet behind the hollow door—
Yet never see you stand, the chain unfastened,
Your lantern on the floor.