Come-To-Good (Inscribed to Lovell Squire)
| knew not, though I've lingered long
Through dear Cornubia's glades of song,
By tinkling stream fair-fringed with moss,
By crag and carn and curious cross,
That our own land of wild and wood
Owned sweet sequestered Come-To-Good.
Yet here it is, with lawn outspread.
With brook and breeze and dew-cup fed,
Where twittering birds from bush and brake
Their ever-murmuring notes awake
O'er many a pilgrim's grassy mound
Within the humble burial ground.
And sleep they iow on beds of clay,
When roses bloom, when leaves decay,
Watched by the ever-spreading sky,
The silver moon, the stars on high,
Till on the resurrection morn
They rise, on angel-wings upbormne.
The hue of Spring is on the earth,
Which feels again a living birth,
Green shoots and flowers from hill to hill;
From creek to creek, from rill to rill;
While wandering cuckoo's welcome note
Doth o'er the golden furze-flowers float.
Here stands in reed-roof fair to see
The meeting-house beside the lea,
With shaven eaves and lattice low,
Where GEORGE FOX preached so long ago,
And where from lips by Heaven unsealed
We heard the Saviour's love revealed.
O Come-To-Good! O temple meet
To bow in silence at His feet!
O fitting place for bard to dwell,
And wake the mysteries of his shell;
Where bank and bower, and lawn and lea,
And wood and water, tell of THEE!
John Harris (Bulo, Reuben Ross 1871)
