"But now the gentle dew-fall sends abroad The fruit-like perfume of the golden furz; The light has left the summit of the hill; Though still a sunny gleam lies beautiful Aslant the ivied beacon. Now farewell, Farewell, awhile, O soft and silent spot! On the green sheep-track, up the heathy hill, Homeward I wend my way; and lo! recalled From bodings that have well nigh wearied me, I find myself upon the brow, and pause Startled! And after lonely sojourning In such a quiet and surrounded nook, This burst of prospect,--here the shadowy main, Dim-tinted, there the mighty majesty Of that huge amphitheater of rich And dewy fields, seems like society Conversing with the mind, and giving it A livelier impulse and a dance of thought! And now, beloved Stowey! I behold Thy church-tower, and, methinks, the four huge elms Clustering, which mark the mansion of my friend; And close behind them, hidden from my view, Is my own lowly cottage, where my babe, And my babe's mother, dwell in peace! With light And quickened footsteps thitherward I tend Remembering thee, O green and silent dell! And grateful that, by nature's quietness And solitary musings, all my heart Is softened, and made worthy to indulge Love, and the thoughts that yearn for all mankind." Stowey, like all other places where remarkable men have lived, even but a few years ago, impresses us with a melancholy sense of rapid change, of the swift flight of human life. There is the little town, there ascend beyond it the green slopes and airy range of the Quantock hills, scattered with masses of woodland, which give a feeling of deep solitude. But where is the poet, who used here to live, and there to wander and think? Where is his friend Poole? All are gone, and village and country are again resigned to the use of simple and little-informed people, who take poets for spies and dark traitors. The little town is vastly like a continental one. It consists of one street, which at an old market-cross diverges into two others, exactly forming an old-fashioned letter Y. The houses are, like continental ones, white, and down the street rolls a little full stream, quite in the fashion of a foreign village, with broad flags laid across to get at the houses. It stands in a particularly agreeable, rich, and well wooded country, with the range of the Quantock hills, at some half-mile distance, and from them a fine view of the sea and the Welsh coast, on the other side of the Bristol Channel.