Poem at start of PR for St Mary, Chiddingfold

[ElizabethHerts]

I thought you might enjoy the following poem, which I found at the front of the parish register for St Mary, Chiddingfold, Surrey, 1653 - 1801, when browsing on Ancestry. It certainly resonated with me:

My Parish Register Chest

In the scant compass of this iron chest
Lie the brief records of three hundred years,
The mute memorials of their smiles and tears;
here side by side ten generations rest,
As with Time’s iron hand together prest;
A catalogue of names all that appears –
Faded their joys, forgotten are their fears,
And all the eager hopes they once possest.
With mournful mind I turn the yellow pages,
Read the dim notice of a long-lost wedding,
How one was born, and overleaf was buried;
Thus swift and silent pass successive ages,
Like autumn trees their leaves for ever shedding,
Which into vast Eternity are hurried.

Richd Wilton

[Shona]

I like that - thank you for posting.

[Olde Crone]

Just think how astonished he would be if he could know how many people would be poring over the registers 200/300 years later!

Swift and silent maybe...but never forgotten, not as long as people like us are ferreting through old registers.

OC

[Val in Oz]

It is exciting to come across something like that isn't it?
I remember finding one at the beginning the 1841 census that the enumerator had written about the twin villages, one of them Wetheringsett. I'm not sure if it shows up on ancestry, but it did on the film I ordered from the IGI records.