A DECORATED CHURCH
Out of the midst of pale wheat lands and tussocky meadow, intersected
by streams which butter bur and marigold announce, and soared over by
pewit and lark and the first swallows with their delicate laughter,
rises the grim, decorated church, of the same colour as the oak trees
round about. White and grey headstones, some of great age, bow to it
in the churchyard, and seem mutely to crave for the shelter from the
north-east wind. There is much room within. All the headstones and
those whom they commemorate might find places and not crowd out the
little congregation. In one transept a knight and lady are taking their
ease in stone, and looking up at the gaudy arms above them. They came
early to the church. From the memorial inscriptions on pavement and
walls, it would seem that the church belongs to a later great family,
still living near. Soldiers, sailors, landowners, clergymen even, they
take possession at their death; from 1623 they have flocked here, and
the names of their virtues live after them; tyrants perhaps in their
lifetime, they have the air of being idols now, and they outnumber the
prophets on the window-glass. The service proceeds in the accustomed
decent manner, with nasal lesson and humming prayer. Then comes the
hymn:--
“Through all the changing scenes of life”--
One woman’s ambitious, shrill treble voice that seems ever about
to fall and yet continues to maintain its airy height, leads the
congregation to unusual adventures of song. The church is dense with
emotion; ordinary gentlemen, shopkeepers, labourers and their wives,
men and women of all degrees of endurance, chivalry, good intention,
uncertain aims, sentimental virtuousness, hypocrisy not dissevered from
hardship, vanity not ignorant of tenderness, hard ambition, the desire
to be respected,--men and women throw all kinds of strange meaning,
heartfelt and present, imaginative, retrospective, expectant, into the
vague words of the hymn. I can see one strong man shouting it with an
expression as if he were pole-axing a bull. His neighbour, a frail,
tearful woman, sings as if it absolves her from the tears with which
she marred not only her own life. One aged woman made it clearly an
expression of the nothingness of mankind, a ridicule and blasphemy of
life, as if she had repeated the words of the old play:--
“Where is now Solomon, in wisdom so excellent?
Where is now Samson, in battle so strong?
Where is now Absalom, in beauty resplendent?
Where is now good Jonathan, hid so long?
Where is now Cæsar, in victory triumphing?
Where is now Dives, in dishes so dainty?
Where is now Tully, in eloquence exceeding?
Where is now Aristotle, learned so deeply?
What emperors, kings, and dukes in times past,
What earls and lords, and captains of war,
What popes and bishops, all at the last
In the twinkling of an eye are fled so far?
How short a feast is this worldly joying?
Even as a shadow it passeth away,
Depriving a man of gifts everlasting,
Leading to darkness and not to day!
O meat of worms, O heap of dust,
O like to dew, climb not too high.”
Other faces express complacency, hope, the newness of a solution of
this thing life, grim, satisfied despair, even a kind of vanity.
All these men and women might agree at a political meeting; here
they differ each from the rest, and every one of the gods in all the
mythologies must be gladdened or angered at some part of the hymn by
the meaning of this or that worshipper; Odin, Apollo, Diana, Astarte,
the Cat, the Beetle, and the rest revive, in whatever Tartarus they are
thrust, at these strange sounds.
The last of the congregation left, but I could still hear the hymn
wandering feebly among the tall arches and up and about, apparently
restless, as if it sought to get out and away, but in vain. The high
grey stone and those delicate windows made a cage; and the human voices
were as those of Seifelmolouk and his memlooks, when the giant king
kept them in cages because the sound of their lamentation seemed to him
the most melodious music, and he thought them birds. Inexorably, the
fancy held me that some gaunt giant, fifty cubits high, kept men and
women in this cage because he loved to hear their voices expressing
moods he knew nothing of. Not more caged are the five brown bells
in the tower, with mute, patient heads like cows, their names being
Solitude, Tranquillity, Duty, Harmony, Joy.