70 MY DEVON YEAR 



record of a stone, but upon the bosom of the Spring ; 

 in the petals of the flowers now hanging out their 

 jewels above his head ; in the nodding grasses and 

 uncurling ferns ; in the music of birds and laughter 

 of little children. 



It is a playground of sun-gleams and shadows, 

 this churchyard of Dean Prior ; a place meet for 

 any singer's sleep ; a sequestered acre, sliding away 

 into fields and copses — a gem set in the gloom of 

 funereal yews, yet agleam with all the colours of 

 springtime, and alive with a whole season's wakening 

 life. Robins build between the unmortared stones 

 of ancient tombs ; each green grave is a garden ; even 

 slate and slab are the hosts of obscure existences 

 — the familiar homes of fleeting insects and enduring 

 moss and lichen. 



Here Herrick ministered, and the plump, jocund 

 body of him passed to and fro, met coarse lives with 

 coarse jests, enjoyed the fleshpots with frank pleasure, 

 dreamed of wine and women and the old joys between 

 sermon-times, and fashioned some of the most ex- 

 quisite lyrics this language shall know. 



The cloth cannot forgive him, and never will. 

 Clergymen do not understand. Only Grosart of 

 clerics has grasped the whole truth about Herrick ; so 

 has Richard John King; so, in a measure, has Gosse ; 

 but Hazlitt, and since his time, many a lesser Cockney 

 critic, only throws the shadow of his own ignorance 

 upon him. 



Away in the adjacent orchard lands, a grey pile 



