Boxing Day, Portland Bill, Dorset

This year, we stayed in Dorset

From Thomas Hardy, The Souls of the Slain

The thick lids of Night closed upon me

Alone at the Bill

Of the Isle by the Race -

Many-caverned, bald, wrinkled of face -

And with darkness and silence the spirit was on me

To brood and be still.

No wind fanned the flats of the ocean,

Or promontory sides,

Or the ooze by the strand,

Or the bent-bearded slope of the land,

Whose base took its rest amid everlong motion

Of criss-crossing tides.

*****