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Whilst Virtue is our walking-staff
And Truth a lantern to our path,
We can abide life’s pelting storm,
That makes our limbs quake, if our hearts be warm.
The figures wear Blakean robes — as did Palmer when without the slightest sense of impropriety he would use himself to model Christ. These villagers are just ‘clothed’. The immensity of moonlight before electricity floods them, and yet, at the same time, darkens the scene making a great drama. The conventional business of going to church is made captivating. Everyone is still saying, ‘Lighten our darkness, we beseech thee, O Lord, and by the great mercy defend us from all perils and dangers of this night,’ just as those in the very same church and on the very same path would have murmured:
Before the ending of the day,
Creator of the world, we pray
That with thy wonted favour thou
Wouldst be our guard and keeper now.
Many years later Samuel Palmer’s son, describing Shoreham, wrote, ‘But (the people) toiled on till the harvest-moon gilded their faces and the hungry owl gave them shrill warning of his supper-time…and the moon herself bore little resemblance to the pallid, small reality we see above us nowadays. She seemed to blush and bend herself towards men (as when she stooped to kiss Endymion…)’ The artist said that cast shadow was the enforcer of light, ‘that latent springs of poetry’ were to be found in darkness, and that figures in a landscape should be in action. All these requirements are present in ‘Coming from Evening Church’.
He and his friends at Shoreham, were, like Coleridge and Wordsworth, dedicated night-walkers. Kent was sumptuous at nightfall, the hops and apples, the cottages and oasthouses all enriched when the daylight failed. All work ceased except that of shepherds and the basic elements of nature took over. The walkers from Evensong are coming from something new when compared with their hilly route. Palmer’s hills are crushingly present but they are kept in their place by a slender spire and framing leaves. Everything is in transition as in Blake’s ‘Night’:
Farewell, green fields and happy groves,
Where flocks have took delight.
Where lambs have nibbled, silent moves
The feet of angels bright.
For these folk another day of rest closes in. In the morning — the everlasting fields! The rural circle turns.
‘Coming from Evening Church’, 1830, by Samuel Palmer (shown opposite) is currently on display at Tate Britain.
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