Poem by Henry Alford

Culbone, or Kitnore, Somerset

HALF-WAY upon the cliff I musing stood
O’er thy sea-fronting hollow, while the smoke
Curled from thy cottage chimneys through the wood
And brooded on the steeps of glooming oak;
Under a dark green buttress of the hill	
Looked out thy lowly house of sabbath prayer;
The sea was calm below; only thy rill
Talked to itself upon the quiet air.
Yet in this quaint and sportive-seeming dell
Hath, through the silent ages that are gone,
A stream of human things been passing on,
Whose unrecorded story none may tell,
Nor count the troths in that low chancel given,
And souls from yonder cabin fled to heaven.

1. Sunset at Burton Pynsent, Somerset
2. Haddon Hall, Derbyshire, July, 1836
3. Malvern Hills
4. Sacred to the Memory of E. S.
5. Summit of Skiddaw, July 7, 1838

Print

1120 Views

Last Poems

To Russian version