Towards democracy

446 Towards Democracy }

Voices and echoes of ages of Christianity, borne onward with the sound of Norman and Saxon chisels:

Phrases that Chrysostom wrote, or good St. Basil; or © borrowed from primitive liturgies of the earliest Christians ; ©

Scraps of antiphonies sung within the Catacombs ; tags, litanies and Kyrie Eleisons, adapted from pagan rituals ;

Fragments of Creeds and Glorias from the days of Athanasius and the Councils; or sanctioned by the use of Sarum ;

Gregorian chants, and quaint melodic strains from far Greek sources :

These blent together,

And laden with hopes and fears of hearts long buried, ©

Come issuing from the doorway.

And all the while under the evening sky

The landscape stretches, so fair, so calm, so actual, And in the air the delicious waft of hawthorn-blossom Floats, and the red June sunset hangs in the West, And high in the branches of the Yew, a peacock, Preening its feathers, sits.

How strange!

To think of the old old life for a thousand years that has | eathered round these stones, and since the yew was a seedling planted, ;

Of the generations of men and women to whom the : Church has been the centre of their days—their first and ||

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