SUN-DIAL, IN THE CHURCHYARD OF BREMHILL. William Lisle Bowles Alexander Huber Editor Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford
Broad Street Oxford OX1 3BG UK
Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive
Taylor Institution Library St Giles' Oxford OX1 3NA UK info@eighteenthcenturypoetry.org https://www.eighteenthcenturypoetry.org/
Oxford This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Bowles, William Lisle, 1762-1850. The Poetical Works of William Lisle Bowles, Vol. I. With Memoir, Critical Dissertation, and Explanatory Notes by George Gilfillan. Edinburgh James Nichol, 9 North Bank Street... 1855 pp. 223-224.

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SUN-DIAL , IN THE CHURCHYARD OF BREMHILL . So passes silent o'er the dead thy shade , Brief Time ; and hour by hour , and day by day , The pleasing pictures of the present fade , And like a summer vapour steal away ! And have not they , who here forgotten lie ( Say , hoary chronicler of ages past ! ) Once marked thy shadow with delighted eye , Nor thought it fled , how certain , and how fast ! Since thou hast stood , and thus thy vigil kept , Noting each hour , o'er mouldering stones beneath ; The pastor and his flock alike have slept , And dust to dust proclaimed the stride of death . Another race succeeds , and counts the hour , Careless alike ; the hour still seems to smile , As hope , and youth , and life , were in our power ; So smiling and so perishing the while . I heard the village bells , with gladsome sound , When to these scenes a stranger I drew near , Proclaim the tidings to the village round , While memory wept upon the good man's bier . My predecessor , Rev. Nathaniel Hume , canon residentiary and precentor of Salisbury , a man of exemplary benevolence . Even so , when I am dead , shall the same bells Ring merrily , when my brief days are gone ; While still the lapse of time thy shadow tells , And strangers gaze upon my humble stone ! Enough , if we may wait in calm content , The hour that bears us to the silent sod ; Blameless improve the time that heaven has lent , And leave the issue to thy will , O God !