Wyndham Towers

From the opening

The motif of the story embodied in the following poem was crudely outlined in a brief sketch printed in an early collection of the authors verse, and subsequently cancelled for a purpose not until now accomplished. Wyndham Towers is not to be confused with this discarded sketch, the text of which has furnished only a phrase, or an indirect suggestion, here and there. That the writer's method, when recasting the poem, was more or less influenced by the poets he had been studying--chiefly the dramatists of the Elizabethan era--will, he hopes, be obvious. It was part of his design, however far he may have fallen from it, to give his narrative something of the atmosphere and color of the period in which the action takes place, though the story is supposed to be told at a later date.

Before you reach the slender, high-arched bridge, Like to a heron with one foot in stream, The hamlet breaks upon you through green boughs-- A square stone church within a place of graves Upon the slope; gray houses oddly grouped, With plastered gables set with crossed oak-beams, And roofs of yellow tile and purplish slate. That is The Falcon, with the swinging sign And rustic bench, an ancient hostelry; Those leaden lattices were hung on hinge In good Queen Bess's time, so old it is. On ridge-piece, gable-end, or dove-cot vane, A gilded weathercock at intervals Glimmers--an angel on the wing, most like, Of local workmanship; for since the reign Of pious Edward here have carvers thrived, In saints'-heads skillful and winged cherubim Meet for rich abbeys. From yon crumbling tower, Whose brickwork base the cunning Romans laid-- And now of no use else except to train The ivy of an idle legend on-- You see, such lens is this thin Devon air, If it so chance no fog comes rolling in, The Torridge where its branching crystal spreads To join the Taw.

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