Long , long may it be ere he comes again ! His hour is one of darkness and adversity and peril . But should domestic tyranny oppress us or the invader 's step pollute our soil , still may the Gray Champion come ! for he is the type of New England 's hereditary spirit , and his shadowy march on the eve of danger must ever be the pledge that New England 's sons will vindicate their ancestry . SUNDAY AT HOME . Every Sabbath morning in the summer-time I thrust back the curtain to watch the sunrise stealing down a steeple which stands opposite my chamber window . First the weathercock begins to flash ; then a fainter lustre gives the spire an airy aspect ; next it encroaches on the tower and causes the index of the dial to glisten like gold as it points to the gilded figure of the hour . Now the loftiest window gleams , and now the lower . The carved framework of the portal is marked strongly out . At length the morning glory in its descent from heaven comes down the stone steps one by one , and there stands the steeple glowing with fresh radiance , while the shades of twilight still hide themselves among the nooks of the adjacent buildings . Methinks though the same sun brightens it every fair morning , yet the steeple has a peculiar robe of brightness for the Sabbath . By dwelling near a church a person soon contracts an attachment for the edifice . We naturally personify it , and conceive its massy walls and its dim emptiness to be instinct with a calm and meditative and somewhat melancholy spirit . But the steeple stands foremost in our thoughts , as well as locally . It impresses us as a giant with a mind comprehensive and discriminating enough to care for the great and small concerns of all the town . Hourly , while it speaks a moral to the few that think , it reminds thousands of busy individuals of their separate and most secret affairs . It is the steeple , too , that flings abroad the hurried and irregular accents of general alarm ; neither have gladness and festivity found a better utterance than by its tongue ; and when the dead are slowly passing to their home , the steeple has a melancholy voice to bid them welcome . Yet , in spite of this connection with human interests , what a moral loneliness on week-days broods round about its stately height ! It has no kindred with the houses above which it towers ; it looks down into the narrow thoroughfare -- the lonelier because the crowd are elbowing their passage at its base . A glance at the body of the church deepens this impression .
Within , by the light XXXXX distant windows , amid refracted shadows we discern the vacant pews and empty galleries , the silent organ , the voiceless pulpit and the clock which tells to solitude how time is passing .
At among as because by of on that to while