Contents -BIBLIOGRAPHIC RECORD

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
England: Vols. I–IV. 1876–79.

Culbone (Culborne)

Culbone, or Kitnore, Somerset

By Henry Alford (1810–1871)

Culbone is a small village, embowered in lofty wooded hills, on the coast between Porlock and Linton. For three months in winter its inhabitants are unvisited by the sun.

HALF-WAY upon the cliff I musing stood

O’er thy sea-fronting hollow, while the smoke

Curled from thy cottage chimneys through the wood

And brooded on the steeps of glooming oak;

Under a dark green buttress of the hill

Looked out thy lowly house of sabbath prayer;

The sea was calm below; only thy rill

Talked to itself upon the quiet air.

Yet in this quaint and sportive-seeming dell

Hath, through the silent ages that are gone,

A stream of human things been passing on,

Whose unrecorded story none may tell,

Nor count the troths in that low chancel given,

And souls from yonder cabin fled to heaven.