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A book of Bristol sonnets

By H. D. Rawnsley

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TENNYSON AT CLEVEDON.
 
 


142

TENNYSON AT CLEVEDON.

He missed the salt fresh eastern airs that blow,
The mills that toss their white arms in the wind;
His father's ashes he had left, to find
That urn of hope where Severn's waters flow.
Here, for his pipe, his native reeds might grow,
But not so sweet! A stranger to his kind,
An alien to his love and peace of mind,
An exile still, his friend lies dust below!
Then to sad eyes thy cottage gave reproof,
Thy cottage, Coleridge, by the western sea,
It's simple chimneys, and it's gable-end:—
For he remembered there, his garret-roof
Hid in thy whispering poplars, Somersby!
And the lone poet found in thee a friend.
 

Coleridge's Cottage, in build of chimney-stack and roof, reminds one strangely of Somersby Rectory.

Charles (now Charles Tennyson Turner) and Alfred Tennyson wrote much of their early poetry in a little garret-room, at the western gable-end of the Parsonage at Somersby, Lincolnshire.