"We hear in this," says the "Lincolnshire Rector,"[4] writing in _Macmillan's Magazine_ of December 1873, "the mighty sound of the breakers as they fling themselves at full tide with long-gathered force upon the slope sands of Skegness or Mablethorpe on the Lincolnshire coast, nowhere is ocean grander in a storm; nowhere is the thunder of the sea louder, nor its waves higher, nor the spread of their waters on the beach wider." It is not only of the breakers that the Poet has given us pictures. Along these sands it was his wont, no doubt, as it has often been that of the writer, To watch the crisping ripples on the beach, And tender curving lines of creamy spray, and it is still Skegness and Mablethorpe which may have furnished him with his simile in "The Dream of Fair Women": So shape chased shape as swift as, when to land Bluster the winds and tides the self-same way, Crisp foam-flakes scud along the level sand, Torn from the fringe of spray. Walking along the shore as the tide goes out, you come constantly on creeks and pools left by the receding waves, A still salt pool, lock'd in with bars of sand, Left on the shore; that hears all night The plunging seas draw backward from the land Their moon-led waters white.[5] or little dimpled hollows of brine, formed by the wind-swept water washing round some shell or stone: As the sharp wind that ruffles all day long A little bitter pool about a stone On the bare coast.[6] Many characteristics of Lincolnshire scenery and of Somersby in particular are introduced in "In Memoriam." In Canto LXXXIX. the poet speaks of the hills which shut in the Somersby Valley on the north: Nor less it pleased in lustier moods Beyond the bounding hill to stray. In XCV. he speaks of the knolls, elsewhere described as "The hoary knolls of ash and haw," where the cattle lie on a summer night: Till now the doubtful dusk reveal'd The knolls once more where, couch'd at ease, The white kine glimmer'd, and the trees Laid their dark arms about the field: and in Canto C. he calls to mind: The sheepwalk up the windy wold, and many other features seen in his walks with Arthur Hallam at Somersby. In "Mariana" we have: From the dark fen the oxen's low Came to her: without hope of change, In sleep she seem'd to walk forlorn, Till cold winds woke the gray-eyed morn, About the lonely moated grange. But no picture is more complete and accurate and remarkable than that of a wet day in the Marsh and on the sands of Mablethorpe: Here often when a child I lay reclined: I took delight in this fair strand and free: Here stood the infant Ilion of the mind, And here the Grecian ships all seem'd to be. And here again I come, and only find The drain-cut level of the marshy lea, Gray sand-banks, and pale sunsets, dreary wind, Dim shores, dense rains, and heavy-clouded sea.