For full five hundred years I've swung In my old grey turret high, And many a changing theme I've sung As the time went stealing by.
Even the 'old grey turret' shows more signs of age and of decay than the bell, for it is strengthened with iron clamps and rods to bind its feeble walls together. Of the pavements, whose flagstones are monuments, the dates and names worn by footsteps; of the vaults beneath, with their grim and ghastly traditions of coffins moved out of place, as was supposed, by supernatural agency, but, as explained, by water; of the thick walls, in which, in at least one village church, the trembling victim of priestly cruelty was immured alive--of these and a thousand other matters that suggest themselves there is no time to speak.
But just a word must be spared to notice one lovely spot where two village churches stand not a hundred yards apart, separated by a stream, both in the hands of one Vicar, whose 'cure' is, nevertheless, so scant of souls that service in the morning in one and in the evening in the other church is amply sufficient. And where is there a place where springtime possesses such a tender yet melancholy interest to the heart as in a village churchyard, where the budding leaves and flowers in the grass may naturally be taken as symbolical of a still more beautiful springtime yet in store for the soul?
The birds of spring come as imperceptibly as the leaves. One by one the buds open on hawthorn and willow, till all at once the hedges appear green, and so the birds steal quietly into the bushes and trees, till by-and-by a chorus fills the wood, and each warm shower is welcomed with varied song. To many, the majority of spring-birds are really unknown; the cuckoo, the nightingale, and the swallow, are all with which they are acquainted, and these three make the summer. The loud cuckoo cannot be overlooked by anyone passing even a short time in the fields; the nightingale is so familiar in verse that everyone tries to hear it; and the swallows enter the towns and twitter at the chimney-top. But these are really only the principal representatives of the crowd of birds that flock to our hedges in the early summer; and perhaps it would be accurate to say that no other area of equal extent, either in Europe or elsewhere, receives so many feathered visitors. The English climate is the established subject of abuse, yet it is the climate most preferred and sought by the birds, who have the choice of immense continents.