William Wordsworth

Inglewood Forest

Suggested by a View from an Eminence in Inglewood Forest

THE FOREST huge of ancient Caledon
Is but a name; nor more is Inglewood,
That swept from hill to hill, from flood to flood:
On her last thorn the nightly moon has shone;
Yet still, though unappropriate wild be none,
Fair parks spread wide where Adam Bell might deign
With Clym o’ the Clough, were they alive again,
To kill for merry feast their venison.
Nor wants the holy abbot’s gliding shade
His church with monumental wreck bestrewn;
The feudal warrior-chief, a ghost unlaid,
Hath still his castle, though a skeleton,
That he may watch by night, and lessons con
Of power that perishes and rights that fade.