In Cornwall and Across the Sea With Poems Written in Devonshire. By Douglas B. W. Sladen |
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TO THE LIZARD. |
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 | In Cornwall and Across the Sea |  |
TO THE LIZARD.
I.
We drove betimes from Marazion town,Skirted Breage church, and, threading Helston streets,
First sighted, where the tilth the moorland meets,
The Cornish heather roving on the down,
With full pale bells eyelashed with dainty brown.
No heather such as this the sportsman greets
As up and down his moor for grouse he beats
In Yorkshire or the Highlands. Cornwall's own
It will not leave the sanguine serpentine
And soil magnesian, but in this far place
It blossoms and the marble gleams divine.
'Tis like a dream some poet's pen might trace
To have this strange fair stone and flower pressed
In one wild corner of the scarce-known west.
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II.
We lighted down and roamed across the moor,'Twixt stunted plants of heather and sea-pink,
Until we found ourselves upon the brink
Of Kynance—Kynance with its sandy floor
And “Cow-rock” like a marble Kohinoor
Blood-hued, upstanding. When the sea did shrink
The “Bellows” brayed with every rise and sink
Of waves that round the island-base did roar,
Even in the calm of a still summer day.
In spacious caverns neath the cliff we walked
With shimmering green and white and crimson gay
For salon fit or banquet-hall, then stalked
Along a dizzy path upon the isle,
To gaze into the Devil's mouth a while.
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III.
We left the isle and clomb the hill once more,Toward the Lizard, to the great twin lights
Seen by the mariner on stormy nights
To warn him of the perils of the shore,
The “Lions' Den” where when the Lions roar
No ship that sails could live,—so fiercely fights
The lion breaker, from the rocky heights
Flung on succeeding lions. Thence we bore
To where the terrace looks upon the cove
Of fishy Cadgwith, picked our dubious way
To where we might gaze downward from above
Into the “Devil's Frying-pan” and day
Being far spent, our way then wended back
To Lizard-town to take the homeward track.
| In Cornwall and Across the Sea | |