Palgrave on Lyme Regis

Francis Turner Palgrave (1824-1897), of "Golden Treasury" fame, was very attached to Lyme Regis, where he made his first visit in 1867. In September 1878 he wrote a long poem "A Dorset Idyl, Harcombe near Lyme". Harcombe is a hamlet a few miles from Lyme Regis.

Here are a few extracts:

"Before me with one happy heave

Of golden green the hillside curves...

This fair Vergilian life,

Where heaven and we and nature are at one!

...Dear land, where new is one with old:

Land of green hillside and of plain...

Wild wood and ruin bold,

And this repose of beauty at my feet...

And from the heighest height we view

Our island-girdling sea

Bar the green valley with a wall of blue."

As Palgrave notes, his descriptions of green Dorset scenery are often contrasted with the landscape-pictures of Homer, Pindar, Sophocles, Theocritus and Vergil. He makes mention of Nausicaa, and  of that fertile garden of King Alcinous described in The Odyssey (supposedly in Corfu), "where summer link'd to summer glows/ Grapes ever ripe, and rose on rose".

He writes, as a patriotic, proud and optimistic Victorian, of his faith in the adaptability of the free, law-abiding British people:

"Should changeful commerce shun the shore,

And newer mightier races meet

To push us from our empire-seat,

England will round her call her own,

As in the days of yore

The sea-girt Isle be Freedom's central throne.

Freedom, fair daughter-wife of Law."

Palgrave wrote other poems about Lyme, published in a rare pamphlet of poems:

 "A Lyme garland; being verses, mainly written at Lyme Regis, or upon the scenery of the neighbourhood", printed Lyme: Dunster, 1874, limited to 150 copies for The School Fund (32 pages).

This poem is also of interest:

At Lyme Regis

Calm, azure, marble sea,
As a fair palace pavement largely spread,
Where the grey bastions of the eternal hills
Lean over languidly.
Bosomed with leafy trees, and garlanded!

Peace is on all I view;
Sunshine and peace; earth clear as heaven one hour;
Save where the sailing cloud its dusky line
Ruffles along the blue.
Brushed by the soft wing of the silent shower.

In no profounder calm
Did the great Spirit over ocean brood,
Ere the first hill his yet unclouded crest
Reared, or the first fair palm
Doubled her maiden beauty in the flood.