Written In A Country Churchyard

Oh! how I hate the cumbrous pride
  Of plume and pall and scutcheon'd hearse,
  And all the rank and ready tide
  Of venal prose and lying verse.
  Nor in the city's churchyard, rife
  With close compacted crowds of dead,
  And clogged with thoughts of stir and strife,
  Would I consent to lay my head
  But where 'mid Quantock's waving scene
  Of brow and glen, some village church
  From forth the coppice clustering green
  Projects its grey and simple porch;
 
  From whose worn seat the eye may view
  Brown upland slope and cattled plain,
  And, farther still, the summits blue
  Of hills that skirt the channell'd main;
  There, Nea, in some quiet nook,
  May we our place of resting have,
  And let a broad majestic oak
  Wave its green branches near the grave.
  No costly stone for us be planned
  With palisading stern and high,
  As if from truth's indignant hand
  To fence foul flattery's graven lie;
  But o'er the turf let sun and air
  And dew their blessed influence fling,
  And rosy children gather there
  The earliest violets of the spring;
  There let the cuckoo's oft-told tale
  Be heard at flush of morning light;
  And there the pensive nightingale
  Chaunt requiem half the summer night.