f many:--

A little chapel grey with years,
And bleached with sun and rain,
One solid four-square tower it rears
Above strong walls which still oppose
Firm front to elemental foes
That rage at them in vain.

Far southward from St. Martha's Hill,
And to the east and west,
The downs heave up green shoulders, till
The distance with its magic blue
Envelops every other hue,
And crest is lost in crest.

Safe sheltered by the encircling downs
The chequered valleys show
Their tapestry of greens and browns,
Made rich by fields of golden grain,
And threaded by a silver vein
Where Wey's clear waters flow.

A churchyard bare of shrub or tree,
All open to the sky,
To every wind of heaven free,
Lies round the chapel, carpeted
With soft, sweet turf where happy dead
In dreamless slumber lie.

For, far removed from camp or mart,
Beneath the sacred sod
Of that blest hill they sleep apart:
Forgotten by the world below,
After life's spendthrift toil they know
The rest that comes from God.

And, oh, it must be good to sleep
Within that churchyard bare,
While turn by turn the seasons keep
A bedside watch, and God may see
Safe in St. Martha's nursery
His children pillowed there.

If I had to choose a month and an hour to visit St. Martha's, it would
be an evening late in April with the trees in the valley at their
freshest and the song of blackbirds about the hill. Others, perhaps,
would choose an August day, with the wind scented and the hill purpled
with heather; perhaps, too, in August the rabbit-cropped turf is
smoothest and greenest. Others may find the chief beauty of the hill in
the bronze and yellow of the changing leaves of October; there are no
hills where the beech glows with a deeper fire than over Albury and the
Tillingbourne. Others even might ask for the vague, wet airs of
midwinter, with the shouldering hilltops east and south and west faint
and mysterious in the clinging mist, and never a house-roof to be seen.
That is an effect of strange loneliness; but the abiding charm of St.
Martha's is the peace of clear air, in the enchantment of low spring
sunlight on the down turf and the quiet walls.

Once I saw a remarkable sight by St. Martha's. Incongruously enough, the
wooded hillsides below the chapel are preserved as game-coverts; indeed,
pheasants are shot quit