Drawing Details in an Old Church

I hear the bell-rope sawing,

And the oil-less axle grind,

As I sit alone here drawing

What some Gothic brain designed;

And I catch the toll that follows

From the lagging bell,

Ere it spreads to hills and hollows

Where the parish people dwell.

I ask not whom it tolls for,

Incurious who he be;

So, some morrow, when those knolls for

One unguessed, sound out for me,

A stranger, loitering under

In nave or choir,

May think, too, "Whose, I wonder?"

But care not to inquire.

A quote from a Hardy novel

"A strong woman who recklessly throws away her strength, she is worse than a weak woman who has never had any strength to throw away.”  (Tess of the D'Urbervilles)

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