Letitia Elizabeth Landon (L. E. L.) in Fisher's Drawing Room Scrap Book, 1833/Boscastle Waterfall and Quarry
32
WATERFALL AND STONE QUARRY, NEAR BOSCASTLE.
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BOSCASTLE WATERFALL AND QUARRY.
H, gloomy quarry! thou dost hide in thee
The tower and shrine.
The city vast and grand and wonderful,
And strong, is thine.
Look at the mighty buildings of our land,
What once were they?
Ere they rose fashioned by the cunning hand,
In proud array.
One fronts me now, a temple beautiful,
Touched by the light
Which has so much of heaven—the light of eve,
Golden and bright.
In dull relief against the cloudy sky
These turrets rise:
Our fine old Abbey, where the dust of kings,
Tranquilly lies.*
Winning the eye amid the crowded street,
To other thought,
Than that the haste, the noise, the changeful scene
Around me brought.
Mingling in air, the twin-born spires
So nobly stand:
They seem eternal, yet are they the work,
Man, of thy hand.
Yet, must they first have, in some quarry lain
Rude, shapeless, lone,
Until the mind of man inspired his hand
To work in stone.
Alas! the contrast between us, and what
We can create;
That man should be so little in himself,
His works so great.
* We talk of the beauties of nature, I must own I am more pleased with those of art. I know no spectacle more impressive than a great street in a great city,—take Piccadilly, for instance; the immense variety of faces that hurry past, each without interest in the other, for how rare it is to remark the greeting even of acquaintance; indeed, you may often walk for days, and not meet a creature you know. The houses, with all their daily life—associations of comfort, force you to think how man's ingenuity has been exerted for man's pleasure. The shops, where every article is a triumph of ingenuity—some curious, some beautiful. The sweep of the Green Park: grass close beside the worn pavement,—the beautiful garden of Lord Coventry,—the royal gift destined for the solace of the blind and of the aged friend. Westminster Abbey rising in dim and dusky grandeur,—Westminster Abbey, where history becomes poetry, and whose illustrious dead are familiar to every memory. The many carriages, each like a grade in the complicated grades of society; the wealth few pause to envy, the poverty still fewer pause to pity. The gradual closing in of night, whose empire is here disputed by the lamps linked in one long line of light,—each holding its imprisoned flame, and, last, the triumphal arch at Hyde Park, while the open space behind is shrouded in unbroken darkness.