a shoal Of darting fish, that on a summer morn... Come slipping o'er their shadows on the sand, But if a man who stands upon the brink But lift a shining hand against the sun, There is not left the twinkle of a fin Betwixt the cressy islets white with flower-- was very dear to Tennyson. When in his "Ode to Memory" he bids Memory Come from the woods which belt the gray hillside, The seven elms, the poplars four That stand beside my father's door, he adds: And _chiefly_ from the brook that loves To purl o'er matted cress and ribbèd sand, Or dimple in the dark of rushy coves, Drawing into his narrow earthen urn In every elbow and turn, The filter'd tribute of the rough woodland, _O! hither lead thy feet!_ If we follow this pastoral rivulet that swerves To left and right thro' meadowy curves, That feed the mothers of the flock, we, too, shall hear the livelong bleat Of the thick fleecèd sheep from wattled folds Upon the ridgèd wolds. And shall see the cattle in the rich grass land, and mark on the right the green-gray tower of Spilsby, where so many of the Franklin family lived and died, the family of whom his future bride was sprung. Still keeping by the brook, we shall see, past the tower of Bag-Enderby which adjoins Somersby, "The gray hill side" rising up behind the Old Hall of Harrington, and The Quarry trenched along the hill And haunted by the wrangling daw, above which runs the chalky "ramper" or turnpike-road which leads along the eastern ridge of the wold to Alford, whence you proceed across the level Marsh to the sea at Mablethorpe.