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.