Morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven [Conn.]) 1848-1894, 1892-10-29

Hard by yon wood, now smiling as in scorn
NOW drooping, woeful wan, like one forlorn
love.
One morn missed him on the accustomed hill
Along the heath, ami near his favorite tree:
Another came; nor yet beside the rill
Nor up the lawn, nor at the wood was he
From your present station at the monu-
ment you have only to turn and face the
west for as sweet a prospect-one altogeth-
or hidden as you entered the lodge gate
az ever human eyes beheld. Across a
lawn-like open field of clover, almost mu-
sical from the hum of murmuring bees, Is
seen, to the right, the remaining huge ga
bles and chimneys, almost completely COW
cred with ivy, of old Stoke Hall, the an
cient manor house. Here once lived the
noble families of the Huntingdons, the
Cokes and the Cobhams, where Queen
Elizabeth became enamored of her one
time regal entertainment. DAVIS chatter
about the old ehimneys and gossip in the
branches of the lofty trees. Ancient
greatness and ststeliness with picturesque
and even winsome decay charm the on
locker in every view of old Stoke Hall
To the left, and somewhat further away,
across gently rolling and velvety lawns,
the beautiful vista being bounded on eth
er side by some of the richest park-forest-
ry in England, is seen the dszzlingly white
outlines of the splendid Stoke Hall of to-
day. Before 1t and still to the south, a
gleam of shimmering blue hints of an ex-
tensive artificial sheet of water. Behind
1t, to the right, is a lofty pillar nearly one
hundred feet in height, surmounted by a
heroic figure of Sir Edward Coke, Eliza
beth's attorney and chief justice of the
Kings bench, whose career and writings
are familiar to the legal profession through
out the world. Through marriage he was
once lord of Stoke manor. But the prince
ly manor house which ends the vista, and
whose white colonnades gives the impres
sion that lawn and forest enchant the eye
to rest upon some far, fair palace built by
fairy hands, was the work of the Penn
family, principally of John Penn, the
founders second son by his second wife.
An Americans vivid fancy prompts pro-
prietsry, or kindred, feeling here; and you
are heartily glad you can find in England
better memorial of this great family than
the tablet to Admiral Penn, in St Mary
Radcliffe church, Bristol, or the grass
choked grave of the grand old Quaker,
William Penn, in lonely Jordan's meeting
house grave-garth.
Squsrely before you, to the west, not
FIVE hundred yards away, an exquisite
gem of scenic reality in the setting of this
unequaled rural picture. stands old Stoke
Poges church, surrounded by its hsllowed
churchyard, fadeless in the memory and
heart of man for just four lines of the
tenderest poetry ever penned-
Beneath those rugged elms, that yew trees
Where heaves the turf in many mold'ring
Each in his narrow cell forever laid,
The rude forefathers Of the hamlet sleep.
AT no old world shrine will your heart
SO leap and thrill with supremely grstiied
expectancy. There is elation, indeed in
toIication, in the perfection of your resli-
zstion. am sure your experience Is an
universal one. Expressions falling from
the lips of differing types of Americans
in my presence, on different occasions.
fully illustrate this. One was by a prim
Ohio matron who looked upon the old and
new manor houses and then the little
church and yard in a matter of fact way
for time, and then said bIiskly to her
handsome daughter standing near:
''If Gray had ever written about this
place different than he did he would have
been playuy fool; and that's all I've got
to say about it,"
plain New England schoolms'am came.
She had walked from Slough to save car
riage hire. She had toiled and scrinped
many years to get to a few of these old
world shrines.
"Oh," she said with tears of Joy filing
her gray, fine eyes, ''to have worked and
saved my whole life, with the surety of
finding it SO true to my heart picture of it
all, would have indeed been a lifelong
pleasure!"
A wealthy ranchman from Wyoming
who came in a carriage, mind you, and
clipped" everything and everybody from
Slough to Stoke, not forgetting myself in
his kindly feeling, because / was able TO
point out few trifiing things he might
have overlooked, voiced the came idea in q
different way:
"I used to parse that stnff of Gray's
when was boy, down in cur Mohawk
valley village school. till the internal
'glimmeriDg landscape of every kind of
grammar was eternally fading from my
sight. But it worked up a regular long
ing to some time come and sort of stand
around where Gray ioafed. Now that I'm
| here the whole thing takes hold of me
| hard. My friend, that fellow Gray,
rounded up things here squarel"
And so he did. Poetry is truly revels
ton through melodious words. But it
| must be true. not false, revealment; or
are certain to stop at the ugly bars of un-
reality and flaw.
You will saun.er lovingly among the
| graves for little, meantime getting &C
| qusinted with old Joseph Lowell, for
many, many years the sexton here, and
| his wife; both nearly seventy years of age,
| but chirpy as crickets aud brown and hard
as nuts They are making a bit of hay
among the mounds. as is their right and
| their only fee, aside from that from bur-
ials, for which Joseph gets ''four bob
| (shillings) fur the big uns, an two for the
| little uns."
| The church itself is a little odd tumble
| of stone and wood, low and wide, with
| two low gables facing the east and gradu
ally merging into one peak at the west
end. 1t has one of the oldest south
porches to be found in England. On the
north side is a huge, low tower, nearly as
large as the body of the church, from the
| top of whose crumbling Norman battle
ments rises tall and very slender wooden
| spire. The entire church to above the
base of the spire is massed and matted
| with ivy, and is an inspiring picture of
mellow antiquity and hsllowed rePose.
| At the east end, just beneath the vestry
window and but few feet from the church
| wall is the ancient low altar tomb of the
| Grsys. On the slab is cut the famous in
scription by Gray himself in memory of
his aunt, Mary Antrobus, and his mother,
| DOrOtny ilotucE
of many children, one of whom alone had
misfortune to survive her." In this most
humble tomb Gray lies. He was buried
here on the 9th of August, III, in accord
| ance with his own request in his will made
at Cambridge, but no mark upon the stone
| which covers his dust ever served to de-
note his resting place. Again the friendly
hand of Penn ia seen in the tablet oppo-
site in the old church wall, recording the
fact of Grsy's burial here. John Penn set
this tablet here eighteen years after Gray's
burial; and ii was the fret record made in
stone that Thomas Gray had lived and
sung in England.
The old south porch is one of a few re-
manning curious examples-along with
that at Grssmere church where Words
worth is buried-of the very ancient
stone porches attached to country church
es. In oldeu times they were the gather
ing places of villsgars. With the room
formerly over them called the Psrvise the
whole, with the stone side seats and Pi-
scins, formed tiny chapel, in which rus
tic marriages were solemnized. Illus