Scottish Poetry Selection
- An Old Churchyard
An Old Churchyard
Great, quiet trees around it sleep
Till merles have found their evensong:
Old pastures where the grass is deep
And morning lays the shadows long,
And cattle, gentle-eyed and slow,
Move silent-footed to and fro.A fair God’s Acre! But to-day
No sigh disturbs the silence there;
No startled bird suspends its lay
To listen to the sound of prayer;
And many a year of moss has grown
Above its last memorial stone.Once from a little hamlet near,
The round-backed weavers of its past
Would come to leave a brother here
Whose shuttle then had throbbed its last;
And slow dispersing home, resume
The long-houred patience of the loom.But there no maid is wooed or wed;
No mother knits beside the door;
And even this hamlet of their dead
Has closed its tale for evermore.
Yet sweet the vanished village lies
As if it slept in Paradise.Meaning of unusual words:
merles=blackbirds
Where else would you like to go in Scotland?