AFTER GRAY

Elegy in a Country Churchyard

Beneath those rugged elms,
that yew-tree's shade,
Where heaves the turf
in many a mould'ring heap,
Each in his narrow cell
for ever laid,
The rude forefathers
of the hamlet sleep.

Nor you, Ye proud,
impute to these some fault,
If memory o'er their tombs
no trophies raise,
Where thro' the long-drawn aisle
and fretted vault
the pealing anthem
swells the note of praise.

 Once upon a time I was Warden of the Mace in an Essex parish. To one side in the hallowed ground fornenst the porch, as I walked into church, was a neglected grave.

I decided to remember the long-gone parishioner and, over a period,  planted bulbs: crocus, galanthus, daffs, narcissi, tulips, hyacinths.  Over time it became known as the Grave of the Unknown Parishioner and acted as a natural calendar.  An early example also of my guerilla gardening escapades which eventually would be promoted on English canal towpaths and anywhere nature needed a hand.

When various bulbs bloomed on the Grave of the Unknown Parishioner, each in its own season, marking the passage of time ... it brought to mind Ecclisiastics III 1-8.  In 2008, Easter Day fell on 23rd March, the earliest date on which Easter can fall.  I took the snap above to celebrate.  I was still a sea-sailor back then . 

Sixteen years later Easter 2024 fell just a week later than in 2008 and global warming ordains that tulips are blooming a month earlier in Peterborough.  The daffs have been out since before Valentine's Day.  I do not know what the Grave of the Unknown Parishioner is telling the faithful but I hope it is telling them that Spring is sprung and all will be well ...  if only the country can get rid of this useless government ...