The Mountain Chapel + 

Chapel and gravestones, old and few, + 

Are shrouded by a mountain fold + 

From sound and view + 

Of life. The loss of the brook’s voice + 

Falls like a shadow. All they hear is + 

The eternal noise + 

Of wind whistling in grass more shrill + 

Than aught as human as a sword, + 

And saying still: + 

“ ’Tis but a moment since man’s birth + 

And in another moment more + 

Man lies in earth + 

For ever; but I am the same + 

Now, and shall be, even as I was + 

Before he came; + 

Till there is nothing I shall be.” + 

Yet there the sun shines after noon + 

So cheerfully + 

The place almost seems peopled, nor + 

Lacks cottage chimney, cottage hearth: + 

It is not more + 

In size than is a cottage, less + 

Than any other empty home + 

In homeliness. + 

It has a garden of wild flowers + 

And finest grass and gravestones warm + 

In sunshine hours + 

The year through. Men behind the glass + 

Stand once a week, singing, and drown + 

The whistling grass + 

Their ponies munch. And yet somewhere, + 

Near or far off, there’s a man could + 

Be happy here, + 

Or one of the gods perhaps, were they + 

Not of inhuman stature dire, + 

As poets say + 

Who have not seen them clearly; if + 

At sound of any wind of the world + 

In grass-blades stiff + 

They would not startle and shudder cold + 

Under the sun. When gods were young + 

This wind was old. + 