United States or Syria ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Sure enough, there was no weather-cock in sight, not even on the church-tower. Not far beyond Kilve we saw a white house, a mile or so away, standing among the trees to the south, at the foot of the high-rolling Quantock Hills. Our post-boy told us that it was Alfoxton, "where Muster Wudswuth used to live," but just how to get to it he did not know.
Nearer the coast is Lilstock church, of which only the chancel remains, serving as a mortuary chapel. Kilve, a village on the Channel, 5 m. E.N.E. of Williton, has had its name enshrined in the verse of both Southey and Wordsworth. From the shore some pretty coast views are obtainable.
The barrier of ancient beech-trees running up into the moor, Kilve twinkling below, the stretch of fields and woods descending northward to the expanse of the yellow Severn Channel, the plain white façade of Alfoxden itself, with its easy right of way across the fantastic garden, the tumultuous pathway down to the glen, the poet's favourite parlour at the end of the house all this presents an impression which is probably less transformed, remains more absolutely intact, than any other which can be identified with the early or even the middle life of the poet.
The little boy in the poem says that he would rather be at Kilve than at Liswyn. When his father foolishly presses him to give a reason for his preference, he invents one: "At Kilve there was no weather-cock, And that's the reason why." Naturally, I looked around the village to see whether it would still answer to the little boy's description.
Visitors that may be supposed to have reached the county only by accident have scarcely a claim to be noticed here, though perhaps allusion may be made to an Egyptian vulture seen at Kilve in 1825, and specimens of Pallas's sand-grouse observed near Bridgwater, Weston-super-Mare, and Bath.
In the post-office at Kilve hangs an old trombone, a memento of the time when the village orchestra assisted in the service at the church. How well I remember those artists and their jealousies! The clarionet or 'clarnet, as he called himself, caused much ill- feeling because he drowned the others, and the double-bass strove ineffectually to avenge himself.
A yellow-hammer, with cap of gold, warbled his sweet, common little song. The colour of the earth was warm and red; the grass was of a green so living that it seemed to be full of conscious gladness. It was a day and a scene to calm and satisfy the heart. At Kilve, a straggling village along the road-side, I remembered Wordsworth's poem called "An Anecdote for Fathers."
Word Of The Day