![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Stop, passenger, a wondrous tale to list—
Here lies a famous mineralogist!
Famous, indeed,—such traces of his power
He’s left from Penmanbach to Penmanmawer,—
Such caves, and chasms and fissures in the rocks,
His works resemble those of earthquake shocks;
And future ages very much may wonder
What mighty giant rent the hills asunder;
Or whether Lucifer himself had ne’er
Gone with his crew, to play at foot-ball there.
His fossils, flints and spars of every hue
With him, good reader, here lie buried too!
Sweet specimens, which toiling to obtain,
He split huge cliffs like so much wood in twain:
We knew, so great the fuss he made about them,
Alive or dead, he ne’er would rest without them,
So to secure soft slumber to his bones,
We paved his grave with all his favorite stones.
His much loved hammer’s resting by his side,
Each hand contains a shell-fish petrified;
His mouth a piece of pudding stone encloses,
And at his feet a lump of coal reposes:
Sure he was born beneath some lucky planet,
His very coffin plate is made of granite!
Weep not, good reader! He is truly blest,
Amidst chalcedony and quartz to rest—
Weep not for him! but envied be his doom,
Whose tomb, though small, for all he loved had room
And, O ye rocks! schist, gneiss, whate’er ye be,
Ye varied strata, names too hard for me,
Sing ‘O be joyful!’ for your direst foe,
By death’s fell hammer, is at length laid low.
Ne’er on your spoils shall —— —— riot,
Shut up your cloudy brows, and rest in quiet!
He sleeps—no longer planning hostile actions,—
As cold as any of his petrifactions;
Enshrined in specimens of every hue,
Too tranquil e’en to dream, ye rocks, of you.
Mr W- was C. Pleydell N Wilton, a Cambridge mathemathics student who spent the summer of 1816 in the Welsh countryside with other students. Hemans, already married by then, must have met him during that summer. She presented him this poem, and another in honour of his hammer; neither were published until 1836.
I read this poem aloud to K when first I read it. She begged me to stop. I think she has no taste. NO TASTE.
Here lies a famous mineralogist!
Famous, indeed,—such traces of his power
He’s left from Penmanbach to Penmanmawer,—
Such caves, and chasms and fissures in the rocks,
His works resemble those of earthquake shocks;
And future ages very much may wonder
What mighty giant rent the hills asunder;
Or whether Lucifer himself had ne’er
Gone with his crew, to play at foot-ball there.
His fossils, flints and spars of every hue
With him, good reader, here lie buried too!
Sweet specimens, which toiling to obtain,
He split huge cliffs like so much wood in twain:
We knew, so great the fuss he made about them,
Alive or dead, he ne’er would rest without them,
So to secure soft slumber to his bones,
We paved his grave with all his favorite stones.
His much loved hammer’s resting by his side,
Each hand contains a shell-fish petrified;
His mouth a piece of pudding stone encloses,
And at his feet a lump of coal reposes:
Sure he was born beneath some lucky planet,
His very coffin plate is made of granite!
Weep not, good reader! He is truly blest,
Amidst chalcedony and quartz to rest—
Weep not for him! but envied be his doom,
Whose tomb, though small, for all he loved had room
And, O ye rocks! schist, gneiss, whate’er ye be,
Ye varied strata, names too hard for me,
Sing ‘O be joyful!’ for your direst foe,
By death’s fell hammer, is at length laid low.
Ne’er on your spoils shall —— —— riot,
Shut up your cloudy brows, and rest in quiet!
He sleeps—no longer planning hostile actions,—
As cold as any of his petrifactions;
Enshrined in specimens of every hue,
Too tranquil e’en to dream, ye rocks, of you.
Mr W- was C. Pleydell N Wilton, a Cambridge mathemathics student who spent the summer of 1816 in the Welsh countryside with other students. Hemans, already married by then, must have met him during that summer. She presented him this poem, and another in honour of his hammer; neither were published until 1836.
I read this poem aloud to K when first I read it. She begged me to stop. I think she has no taste. NO TASTE.