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Updated: June 29, 2025
Meads where for hay the clover grows, Corn-fields which hedges trim inclose, A mill a rushing brook upon, And pigeon tower fram'd of stone; A fish-pond deep and dark to see, To cast nets in when need there be, Which never yet was known to lack A plenteous store of perch and jack.
When the sun of summer beams upon the growing landscape, and, ascending some eminence, you survey the valleys covered over with corn, the hills adorned with verdure, the trees bending their abundant foliage to the gale, the flowers in "yellow meads of asphodel and amaranthine bowers," perfuming the air with their odours, you seem for a moment to inhabit regions of enchantment and perpetual beauty.
Gilmore has no concern; but he owns a large tract of the water meads, and again has a farm or two up on the downs as you go towards Chiltern. But they lie out of the parish of Bullhampton. Altogether he is a man of about fifteen hundred a year, and as he is not as yet married, many a Wiltshire mother's eye is turned towards Hampton Privets, as Mr. Gilmore's house is, somewhat fantastically, named.
As he rode through the land, he saw how it seemed that a dire pestilence had swept over it; for where he had seen the golden corn waving in miles of smiling fields, he saw it now blackened along the ground; the trees were stripped of their leaves and fruit, the cattle lay dead in the meads, and the fish rotted in the streams, while in the villages lay the people dead or dying in shattered or roofless cottages.
Only one sound rose above this din of weather, and that was the roaring of a ten-hatch weir to the southward, from a river in the meads which formed the boundary of the heath in this direction. He lingered on in perfect stillness till he began to fancy that the midnight hour must have struck.
Descending the downy hill, that here and there was studded with fine old trees, enriching by their presence the view from the abbey, Lady Annabel and her party entered the meads, and, skirting the lake, approached the venerable walls without crossing the stream. It was difficult to conceive a scene more silent and more desolate.
Canst thou not enjoy, even to rapture, the brightness of the sun, the perfume of the meads, and the song of the dear birds which inhabit among the trees? Yes, thou canst; for I have seen thee, and observed thee doing so. Yet, during the whole time that I have known thee, I have not heard proceed from thy lips one single word of praise or thanksgiving to . . .
It rang out right loud and clear from our throats over the gentlemen's heads as they sat at our feet, and through the garden close: "Earth is set free and flowers In all the meads are springing, The balmy noontide hours Are sweet with odors rare; The hills for joy are leaping. The happy birds are singing, And now, while winds are sleeping, Soar through the sunny air.
After the Norman Conquest it became the property of De Clare, one of William's followers, who built near it an enormous castle, which enjoyed considerable celebrity during several centuries from having been the birthplace of Strongbow, the conqueror of Ireland, but which is at present chiefly illustrious from the mention which is made of it in one of the most stirring lyrics of modern times, a piece by Walter Scott, called the "Norman Horseshoe," commemorative of an expedition made by a De Clare, of Chepstow, with the view of insulting with the print of his courser's shoe the green meads of Glamorgan, and which commences thus:
Now the white mist lifts like a curtain it rises and rises and rises. Bam! the sun is risen. I see the river, like a stretch of silver ribbon; it weaves in and out and stretches away, away, away. The masses of the trees, of the meads, the meadows the poplars, the leaning willows, are all revealed by the mist that is reeling and rolling up the hillside.
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