C.D. Warner, et al., comp.
The Library of the World’s Best Literature. An Anthology in Thirty Volumes. 1917.

The Ruined Chapel

From ‘Day and Night Songs’

BY the shore, a plot of ground

Clips a ruined chapel round,

Buttressed with a grassy mound;

Where Day and Night and Day go by

And bring no touch of human sound.

Washing of the lonely seas,

Shaking of the guardian trees,

Piping of the salted breeze;

Day and Night and Day go by

To the endless tune of these.

Or when, as winds and waters keep

A hush more dead than any sleep,

Still morns to stiller evenings creep,

And Day and Night and Day go by;

Here the silence is most deep.

The empty ruins, lapsed again

Into Nature’s wide domain,

Sow themselves with seed and grain

As Day and Night and Day go by;

And hoard June’s sun and April’s rain.

Here fresh funeral tears were shed;

Now the graves are also dead;

And suckers from the ash-tree spread,

While Day and Night and Day go by;

And stars move calmly overhead.