England -- Description and travel; Literary landmarks -- England; Shakespeare, William, 1564-1616 -- Homes and haunts -- England
This inscription begs the reader to remember
Raleigh's virtues as well as his faults,--a plea, surely, that every man
might well wish should be made for himself at last. I thought of the
verses that the old warrior-poet is said to have left in his Bible, when
they led him out to die--
"Even such is time; that takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, our all we have,
And pays us nought but age and dust;
Which, in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wandered all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days.--
But from this earth, this grave, this dust,
My God shall raise me up, I trust."
This church contains a window commemorative of Raleigh, presented by
Americans, and inscribed with these lines, by Lowell--
"The New World's sons, from England's breast we drew
Such milk as bids remember whence we came;
Proud of her past, wherefrom our future grew,
This window we inscribe with Raleigh's name."
It also contains a window commemorative of Caxton, presented by the
printers and publishers of London, which is inscribed with these lines
by Tennyson--
"Thy prayer was Light--more Light--while Time shall last,
Thou sawest a glory growing on the night,
But not the shadows which that light would cast
Till shadows vanish in the Light of Light."
In St. Margaret's--a storied haunt, for shining names alike of nobles
and poets--was also buried John Skelton, another of the old bards (obiit
1529), the enemy and satirist of Cardinal Wolsey and Sir Thomas More,
one of whom he described as "madde Amaleke," and the other as "dawcock
doctor." Their renown has managed to survive those terrific shafts; but
at least this was a falcon who flew at eagles. Here the poet Campbell
was married,--October 11, 1803. Such old churches as this--guarding so
well their treasures of history--are, in a special sense, the
traveller's blessings. At St. Giles's, Cripplegate, the janitor is a
woman; and she will point out to you the lettered stone that formerly
marked the grave of Milton. It is in the nave, but it has been moved to
a place about twelve feet from its original position,--the remains of
the illustrious poet being, in fact, beneath the floor of a pew, on the
left of the central aisle, about the middle of the church: albeit there
is a story, possibly true, that, on an occasion when this church was
repaired, in August, 1790, the coffin of Milton suffered profanation,
and his bones were dispersed.
Illustration: "St. Giles', Cripplegate."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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