’Tis to this Church I call thee, and that place
Where slept our fathers when they’d run their race: 
We too shall rest, and then our children keep
Their road in life, and then, forgotten, sleep;
Meanwhile the building slowly falls away,
And, like the builders, will in time decay. 
   The old Foundation—­but it is not clear
When it was laid—­you care not for the year;
On this, as parts decayed by time and storms,
Arose these various disproportion’d forms;
Yet Gothic all—­the learn’d who visit us
(And our small wonders) have decided thus:-
“Yon noble Gothic arch,” “That Gothic door;”
So have they said; of proof you’ll need no more. 
   Here large plain columns rise in solemn style,
You’d love the gloom they make in either aisle;
When the sun’s rays, enfeebled as they pass
(And shorn of splendour) through the storied glass,
Faintly display the figures on the floor,
Which pleased distinctly in their place before. 
   But ere you enter, yon bold tower survey,
Tall and entire, and venerably gray,
For time has soften’d what was harsh when new,
And now the stains are all of sober hue;
The living stains which Nature’s hand alone,
Profuse of life, pours forth upon the stone: 
For ever growing; where the common eye
Can but the bare and rocky bed descry;
There Science loves to trace her tribes minute,
The juiceless foliage, and the tasteless fruit;
There she perceives them round the surface creep,
And while they meet their due distinction keep;
Mix’d but not blended; each its name retains,
And these are Nature’s ever-during stains. 
   And wouldst thou, Artist! with thy tints and brush,
Form shades like these?  Pretender, where thy blush? 
In three short hours shall thy presuming hand
Th’ effect of three slow centuries command? 
Thou may’st thy various greens and grays contrive;
They are not Lichens, nor like ought alive;-
But yet proceed, and when thy tints are lost,
Fled in the shower, or crumbled by the frost;
When all thy work is done away as clean
As if thou never spread’st thy gray and green;
Then may’st thou see how Nature’s work is done,
How slowly true she lays her colours on;
When her least speck upon the hardest flint
Has mark and form, and is a living tint;
And so embodied with the rock, that few
Can the small germ upon the substance view. 
   Seeds, to our eyes invisible, will find
On the rude rock the bed that fits their kind;
There, in the rugged soil, they safely dwell,
Till showers and snows the subtle atoms swell,
And spread th’ enduring foliage;—­then we trace
The freckled flower upon the flinty base;
These all increase, till in unnoticed years
The stony tower as gray with age appears;
With coats of vegetation, thinly spread,
Coat above coat, the living on the dead;
These then dissolve to dust, and make a way