[198] the heart. No! give me the grave-yards of the common people, and the poor; the expressions of a nature which deems itself unobserved; the simplicity of a genuine feeling, obscured with whatever rudeness or ignorance. Give me the “lone places” where there is nothing “to be seen” but stones and sods, and trees, and chequered turf;--
The temple twilight of the gloom profound,Where but in such a spot, and in a country full of such, could genius itself have ever penned the “Elegy?” Who but an English poet could have been its author?-one who had revelled from childhood in scenes like those he describes in that immortal poem, and who had lain the dust of his own mother “where heaves the turf in many a mouldering heap.” From what other source than a “mountain church-yard” could spring the spirit of “Easter day,” --so sublimely cheerful, so divinely true? It was the graves that appealed to the poetess; to them she uttered her appeal:--
The dew-cup of the frail anemone,
The reed by every wandering whisper thrilled.
And you, ye graves! upon whose turf I stand,
Girt with the slumber of the hamlet's dead,
Time, with a soft and reconciling hand,
The covering mantle of bright moss hath spread
O'er every narrow bed:
But not by time, and not by nature sown
Was the celestial seed, whence round you peace hath grown.
