Leaving Chartknolle
My friend is leaving Chartknolle.
Five years she’s languished here.
Now looking for a new bolt hole,
And may not shed a tear.
But what slow pace about this place
That stayed her usual wandering mood;
That kept her from life’s squalid race,
In splendid stolid solitude?
I’ll now explain the natural bond,
That dwells on this domain,
Enthralling heart and soul beyond
What logic may ordain.
Here grace the magical embrace,
Of sweeping vale and daunting hill,
It’s wooded copse and meadow chase,
Unruffled still by plough or drill.
Come, walk with me up Gerrard’s Hill,
The Ridgeway path from Town,
A strapping climb, we’ll coil our will,
And clamber to the crown.
Then slow our pace, and southwards gaze,
Where busy bustling Bridport sprawls,
And Lyme Bay glitters through the haze,
Between Jurassic coastal walls.
To Beaminster a final look,
Then onward we’ll repair,
Down to our left a picture book
Stoke Abbott painted there;
Among the trees, a dreamlike frieze,
Church, and cottages of Wessex stone,
Idyllic scene of genteel ease,
A rural bloom in Dorset grown.
On downwards step along the trail,
The Big House to our left.
Then through the gates above the dale,
Green ponds brood in the cleft.
And towering beech beseech the bank,
Where red-legged partridge often dwell,
An old brick culvert, cold and dank,
Evokes a Fairy Dingle Dell.
Another gate, a pasture field,
And Wadden Hill above,
Where buried relics lay concealed
Beneath the sandstone bluffs.
For excavations of the ground,
(Where once Vespasian’s legion camped)
Coins of ancient Rome have found,
On which the Caesars’s head was stamped.
Three fallow fields, where cattle feed,
Long climb up Meadow Bluff,
The tangled grass our boots impede,
The going slow and rough.
And here we leave this fond estate,
Ahead lies lofty Lewesdon’s view.
And she leaves too, my restless mate,
For Beaminster, and pastures new.
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| Leaving Gerrards Hill |
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| Stoke Abbott from Gerrard's Hill |
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| West Bay from Gerrard's Hill |
The Gypsy Trail
