THE CHURCH OF ST. HELEN'S, DARLEY DALE. 39 



Co % §nxh]) fleto. 



Old yew, what thought can measure back thy years, 

 Or guess whose hand within these hallowed bounds 



Planted and consecrated thee with tears 

 Where slept his dead beneath their new-made mounds ? 



What generations of poor mortal man 



Since then have lain within thy eyeless gaze ; 



Who furthest had outstretched life's common span 

 A very babe to thine unnumbered days ! 



Thou king of yews ' yea, who disputes thy crown ? 



For though there be of more stupendous girth, 

 Their walls are ruin : none of like renown 



With bole unmanned survives in British earth : 



While dynasties have risen and decayed 



Here in God's acre thou hast silent stood 

 Careless of time, by tempests undismayed. 



A tower impregnable of living wood. 



Majestic tree ! alas, to vulgar minds 



How unsuggestive of the ages flown ! 

 They come, and wonder, and pass by, — nor finds 



One thought a place but of thy bulk alone : 



Nor lingers in the annals of the Dale, 



Or in our people's legendary lore, 

 Trustworthy hint whereon to build the tale, 



By safe conjecture of those days of yore. 



Yet may the imaginative soul create 



What various fortunes marked thine agelong growth — 

 What meetings, partings, grief, and love, and hate, 



What secret crimes, what pangs of sundered troth. 



Beneath the welcome covert of thy boughs 

 A thousand years of village life have passed ; 



Here childhood sported, youth made lovers' vows, 

 Old age found rest, and all a grave at last. 



Sir John of Darley knew thee : in thy shade 



The Norman masons wrought their moulded stones : 



Here turned to dust gay foresters are laid : 



Thy roots have wandered among Saxon bones : 



Thy stubborn wood through many a Pagan shield 

 Drove its resistless passage : thou perchance 



Didst arm the archers who on Crecy field 

 Rained havoc on the chivalry of France. 



Fair Agnes Rollesley with thy leaves of gloom 



Wreathed her lord's bier. Thou heardest the last farewell 



Oft as they bore to his ancestral tomb 



Some Milward, Wendesley, or Collumbell. 



And through thy darkness moaned the heated air 

 When death held carnival,* and one by one 



Who to the pit their hideous burden bare 



Themselves were borne ere sank another sun : — 



* The Burial Register for the year 1551 records nine deaths in six days 

 from "ye sweatinge sickeness," or plague. And again in 1558, within a very 

 short space, Alice Stafford, two Hayes, and three Matheis "dyed of the 

 plague."— F. A. 



