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Title: Palm Sunday In Wales
Author: J. C. Manning [
More Titles by Manning]
FLOWERING SUNDAY.
PRIZE POEM.
WREXHAM NATIONAL EISTEDDFOD, 1876.
Out by the hedgerows, along by the steep;
Through the meadows; away and away,
Where the daisies, like stars, through the green grass peep,
And the snowdrops and violets, waking from sleep,
Look forth at the dawning day.
Down by the brooklet--by murmuring rills,
By rivers that glide along;
Where the lark in the heavens melodiously trills,
And the air the wild blossom with perfume fills,
The shimmering leaves among.
Through the still valley; along by the pool,
Where the daffodil's bosom of gold
So shyly expands to the breezes cool
As they murmur, like children coming from school,
In whisperings over the wold.
In the dark coppice, where fairies dwell,
Where the wren and the red-breast build;
Along the green lanes, through dingle and dell,
O'er bracken and brake, and moss-covered fell,
Where the primroses pathways gild.
Hither and thither the tiny feet
Of children gaily sped,
In the cool grey dawn of the morning sweet,
Plucking wild flowers--an offering meet
To garnish the graves of the dead.
Out from the beaten pathway, quaint and white,
The village church--a crumbling pile--is seen;
It stands in solitude midst mounds of green
Like ancient dame in moss-grown cloak bedight.
The mantling ivy clings around its form--
The patient growth of many and many a year.
As though a gentle hand had placed it there
To shield the tottering morsel from the storm.
A sombre cypress rears its mournful head
Above the porch, through which, in days gone by,
Young men and maidens sped so hopefully,
That now lie slumbering with the silent dead:
The silent dead, that round the olden pile
Crumble to dust as though they ne'er had been.
Whose graven annals, writ o'er billows green,
Though voiceless, tell sad stories all the while.
And as they speak in speechless eloquence,
The waving shadows of the cypress fall
In spectral patches on the quaint old wall,
Nodding in wise and ghostly reticence
In silent sanction at the stories told
By each decrepit, wizen-featured stone,
That seems to muse, like ancient village crone
Belost in thought o'er memories strange and old.
Outside the stunted boundary, a row
Of poplars tall--beside whose haughty mien
And silky rustlings of whose robes of green
The lowly church still humbler seems to grow.
A-near the lych-gate in the crumbling wall,
A spreading oak, grotesque and ancient, stands,
Like aged monk extending prayerful hands
In silent benediction over all,
'Twas early morn: the red sun glinted o'er
The hazy sky-line of the far-off hill:
Below, the valley slept so calm and still--
A misty sea engirt by golden shore.
Out in the dim and dreamy distance rose
A spectral range of alp-like scenery--
Mountain on mountain, far as eye could see,
Their foreheads white and hoar with wintry snows.
And as I leaned the low-built wall upon
That shut the little churchyard from the road,
Children and maidens into Death's abode,
With wild flow'rs laden, wandered one by one.
And in their midst, stooping and white with age,
Rich in their wealth of quaint old village lore,
Came ancient dames, with faces furrowed o'er,
That told of griefs in life's long pilgrimage.
The sun is rising now: the poplar tips
Are touched with liquid light: the gravestones old,
And hoary church, are flushed with fringe of gold,
As though embraced by angel's hallowed lips.
And with the morning sunshine children roam
To place wild flowers where the loved ones slept;
O'er father, mother, sister--long since swept
Away by death--with blossoms sweet they come.
Silent reminders of abiding love!
What tender language from each petal springs!
Affection's tribute! Heart's best offerings!
Wanderers, surely, from the realms above!
For heart-to-heart, and life-to-life, had been
The loves of those who were and those who are;
Till death had severed them--O, cruel bar!
Leaving a dark and unknown stream between.
And on that stream, in loving fancy tossed,
Each faithful heart its floral tribute threw,
As though the hope from out the tribute grew
To bridge the gulf the one beloved had crossed.
Near yonder grave there stands a widowed life:
Husband and son beneath the grave-stone rest:
Some laurels tell, by tender lip caressed,
The changeless love of mother and of wife.
And o'er the bright green leaflets as they lie
She scatters snowdrops with their waxen leaves,
And all the while her troubled bosom heaves
In tenderness, with many a sorrowing sigh.
Out from the light, to where the cypress shade
In mournful darkness falls, a figure crept;
And as she knelt, the morning breezes swept
A cloud of hair about her drooping head.
Her feet were small and slender, bare and white--
White as the daisy-fringe on which she trod;
Like shimmering snowdrops in the greening sod,
Or glow-worms glistening in the Summer night.
And as deep down in gloomy chasms seen
By those up-looking, stars in daylight shine,
So shone the beauty of her face divine
In the dark shadows of the cypress green.
Her girlish hands a primrose wreath enwove,
With fingers deft, and eyes with tears bedimmed:
No lovelier face the painter's art e'er limned,
No poet's thought e'er told of sweeter love
Than that young mother's, as, with tender grace,
She kissed the chaplet ere she laid it down
Upon a tiny hillock, earthy-brown--
Of first and only child the resting place.
And then the few stray blossoms that were left
She kissed and strewed upon the little mound--
Looked lingering back towards the sacred ground,
As from the shade she bore her heart bereft.
As gentle ripples, from the side we lave
Of placid lake, will reach the other side,
So, o'er Death's river--silent, dark, and wide--
Blossoms may bear the kiss that mother gave.
Or, if in fervent faith she deemed it so,
The thought to joyless lives a pleasure brings,
And who shall tell, where doting fondness clings,
The loss which hearts bereaved can only know?
And who shall doubt that to such love is given,
Borne upward, clothed in perfume to the sky,
The pow'r to reach, in death's great mystery,
Lost hearts, and add a bliss to those of Heaven?
Other sad pilgrims came. A mother here
A duteous daughter mourns, whose days had been
A ceaseless blessing--an oasis green
On life's enfevered plain: a brooklet clear,
That ran the meadows of glad lives along,
Till, like a stream that meanders to the sea,
In the dark Ocean of Eternity
Lost was their source of laughter, light, and song.
And yonder, clothed in darksome silence, grieves
A loving daughter near a mother's tomb--
Down by the stunted wall in willow-gloom
And shadows thrown by sombre cypress leaves:
And as, in life, the waving kerchief speaks
The words of friends departing which the heart
Is all too full to utter e're we part
For ever, so the sorrowing daughter seeks
In thought one recollection more to wave
To one long dead; and asks in speechless woe
Primrose and snowdrop on the mound below
To bear love's messages beyond the grave!
And in the golden sunshine children come
With prattling tongue and winsome, rosy face--
Like blossoms flowering in a lonely place--
And lay their tributes o'er each narrow home
Where lies the helpless beacon of their lives
In darkness quencht--gone ere their infant thought
Could realise the loss which Death had wrought--
The stab the stern Destroying Angel gives.
And o'er each silent grave Love's tributes fall--
The primrose, cowslip, gentle daffodil--
The snow-drop, and the tender daisy--till
God's acre sleeps beneath a flowery pall.
And now the sun in all its glory came
And lit the world up with a light divine,
Casting fresh beauty o'er each sacred shrine:
Breathing on all things an inspiring flame.
As if the God of Light had bade it be,
In sweet reward for pious rite performed;
As if, with human love and fondness charmed,
The Lord had smiled with love's benignity.
For not to this old churchyard where I stand
Is audience of the dead, through flow'rs, confined
A nation's heart--a nation's love--combined,
Make it the sweet observance of the land.
In humble cot--in proud patrician halls,
The Floral Festival fills every breast;
And o'er the grass, where'er the loved ones rest,
The lowly flow'r with choice exotic falls.
And as they fall upon the sacred spot,
Sacred to every heart that strews them there,
They seem to sing in voices low and clear:
"Though gone for evermore--forgotten not!
"Though never more--still evermore--above
"Eternal will their deathless spirits reign.
"No more until above to meet again:
"Till then send up sweet messages of love."
So sang the blossoms with their odorous breath--
Or so in fancy sang they unto me;
"No more--yet evermore, eternally!
"Though lost, alas! remembered still in death!"
[The end]
J. C. Manning's poem: Palm Sunday In Wales
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