The Church Organ

The homeless man has heard thy voice,
Its sound doth move his memory deep;
He stares bewildered, as a man
That's shook by earthquake in his sleep.

Thy solemn voice doth bring to mind
The days that are forever gone:
Thou bringest to mind our early days,
Ere we made second homes or none.

William Henry Davies

William Henry Davies was a Welsh poet and writer, best known for his poetry depicting tramp life and the natural world. Davies spent much of his life as a wanderer in the UK and the USA. Despite his lifestyle, he became one of the most popular poets of his time, with works including 'Leisure', which begins with the famous lines, 'What is this life if, full of care, we have no time to stand and stare?'. His autobiography, 'The Autobiography of a Super-Tramp', details his adventures and is considered a classic.

William Henry Davies

Lovely Dames

William Henry Davies, Simple Poetry

Smiles

William Henry Davies, Simple Poetry

Birds

William Henry Davies, Simple Poetry

Days Too Short

William Henry Davies, Simple Poetry

English

Suggested Poems

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The Organ-Blower

Devoutest of My Sunday friends,
The patient Organ-blower bends;
I see his figure sink and rise,
(Forgive me, Heaven, my wandering eyes!)
A moment lost, the next half seen,
His head above the scanty screen,
Still measuring out his deep salaams
Through quavering hymns and panting psalms.

No priest that prays in gilded stole,
To save a rich man's mortgaged soul;
No sister, fresh from holy vows,
So humbly stoops, so meekly bows;
His large obeisance puts to shame
The proudest genuflecting dame,
Whose Easter bonnet low descends
With all the grace devotion lends.

O brother with the supple spine,
How much we owe those bows of thine
Without thine arm to lend the breeze,
How vain the finger on the keys!
Though all unmatched the player's s...

Oliver Wendell Holmes

The Old Church Bell.

It hangs today where it has hung for fifty years or more,
But some who loved its silver tones the church-yard covers o'er,
And many are the times since then, with deep and solemn knell,
Has tolled for dear departed ones the
                                Old
                                    Church
                                        Bell!

Within a latticed tower it swings, high up above the street,
And every Sabbath morn is heard the music clear and sweet
Which floats above the village roofs, and over hill and dell,
Upborne upon the vagrant wind, from the
                                Old
                                    Church
                                        Bell!

Full many a change the hand of Time has in the village wrought,
And ...

George W. Doneghy

The Old Church Choir

    I am slowly treading the mazy track
That leadeth, through sunshine and shadows, back -
Through freshest meads where the dews yet cling
As erst they did to each lowly thing,
Where flowers bloom and where streamlets flow
With the tender music of long ago -
To the far-off past that, through mists of tears,
In its spring time loveliness still appears,
And wooes me back to the gleaming shore
Of sunny years that return no more.

    And to night, all weary, and sad, and lone,
I return in thought to those bright years flown,
Whose lingering sweetness, e'en yet, I feel
Like the breath of flower-scents over me steal
I am treading o'er mounds where the dead repose, -
I am stirring the dust of life's perished rose, -
I am rustling the withered leaves that lie

Pamela S. Vining (J. C. Yule)

The Old Church On The Hill.

Moss-grown, and venerable it stands,
    From the way-side dust and noise aloof,
And the great elms stretch their sheltering hands
    To bless its grey old roof.

About it summer's greenery waves;
    The birds build fearless overhead;
Its shadow falls among the graves;
    Around it sleep the dead.

The summer sunshine softly takes
    The chancel window's pictured gloom;
The moonlight enters too, and makes
    The shadow of a tomb.

Along these aisles the bride hath passed,
    And brightened, with her innocent grace.
The pensive twilight years have cast
    About the holy place.

They brought her here--a tiny maid,
    Unweeting any gain or loss,
And on her baby forehead laid
    The symbol of the Cross.

And he...

Kate Seymour Maclean

Apostrophe To An Old Psalm Tune

I met you first - ah, when did I first meet you?
When I was full of wonder, and innocent,
Standing meek-eyed with those of choric bent,
While dimming day grew dimmer
    In the pulpit-glimmer.

Much riper in years I met you - in a temple
Where summer sunset streamed upon our shapes,
And you spread over me like a gauze that drapes,
And flapped from floor to rafters,
    Sweet as angels' laughters.

But you had been stripped of some of your old vesture
By Monk, or another. Now you wore no frill,
And at first you startled me. But I knew you still,
Though I missed the minim's waver,
    And the dotted quaver.

I grew accustomed to you thus. And you hailed me
Through one who evoked you often. Then at last
Your raiser was borne off, and I mourned...

Thomas Hardy

Ecclesiastical Sonnets - Part III. - XXXIX - Church To Be Erected

Be this the chosen site; the virgin sod,
Moistened from age to age by dewy eve,
Shall disappear, and grateful earth receive
The corner-stone from hands that build to God.
Yon reverend hawthorns, hardened to the rod
Of winter storms, yet budding cheerfully;
Those forest oaks of Druid memory,
Shall long survive, to shelter the Abode
Of genuine Faith. Where, haply, 'mid this band
Of daisies, shepherds sate of yore and wove
May-garlands, there let the holy altar stand
For kneeling adoration; while above,
Broods, visibly portrayed, the mystic Dove,
That shall protect from blasphemy the Land.

William Wordsworth