Explore "Ruckinge Church" by Edith Nesbit on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
"And we said how dreary and desolate and forlorn the church / was, and how long it was since any music but that of the / moth-eaten harmonium and the heartless mixed choir had sounded / there. And we said: 'Poor old church! it will never hear any / true music any more'. Then she turned to us from the door of / the Lady Chapel, which was plastered and whitewashed, and had a / stove and the Evangelical Almanac in it, and her eyes were full / of tears. And, standing there, she sang 'Ave Maria' -- it was / Gounod's music, I think -- with her voice and her face like an / angel's. And while she sang a stranger came to the church door / and stood listening, but he did not see us. Only we saw that he / loved her singing. And he went away as soon as the hymn was / ended, we also soon following, and the church was left lonely / as before. " -- _Extract from our Diary._
The boat crept slowly through the water-weeds / That greenly cover all the waterways, / Between high banks where ranks of sedge and reeds / Sigh one sad secret all their quiet days, / Through grasses, water-mint and rushes green / And flags and strange wet blossoms, only seen / Where man so seldom comes, so briefly stays.