Page:Highways and Byways in Lincolnshire.djvu/255

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THE PELHAM PILLAR
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but the words sufficiently indicate the position of the villages—one (near Fillingham) on the Ermine Street, and one (near Grasby) north of Caistor.

There is no view, I think, in the county so wide all round as that from the top of the Pelham Pillar. It stands on one of the highest points of the Wold, from whence the ground falls on three sides. In front are the woods of Brocklesby and the mausoleum, with the Humber and Hull in the distance; on the right Grimsby, the Spurn Point, and the grand spire of Patrington in Holderness, and on the left the wide mid-Lincolnshire plain as far as "the Cliff." Of the Wold villages between Caistor and Barnetby, where the Wold stops for a couple of miles and lets the railway and the Brigg-to-Brocklesby road through on the level, none affords a better view than Grasby. But the whole of this road is one not to be missed. As we pass along it we first reach Clixby, which shows, or rather hides, a tiny church in a thick clump of trees by the road side, where is a churchyard cross, restored after the model of Somersby. The little stone church has been once very dilapidated, and is now renewed with a double bell-turret in brick—no wonder it hides itself in the trees. There is also a remarkable modern graveyard cross of dark stone, of a very early primitive shape, such as is seen on some of the incised grave stones of Northumbria. North of Clixby is Grasby. This church was the home for over forty years of the poet's brother Charles Tennyson-Turner, the author, with Alfred, of the "Poems by Two Brothers," and afterwards of many sonnets written at Grasby. It would be difficult to surpass the charm of one called 'Letty's Globe':

LETTY'S GLOBE.

When Letty had scarce passed her third glad year,
And her young artless words began to flow,
One day we gave the child a coloured sphere
Of the wide earth, that she might mark and know,
By tint and outline, all its sea and land.
She patted all the world; old empires peeped
Between her baby fingers; her soft hand
Was welcome at all frontiers. How she leap'd
And laugh'd and prattled in her world-wide bliss,
But when we turned her sweet unlearned eye
On our own isle, she raised a joyous cry,
'Oh! yes, I see it, Letty's home is there!'
And while she hid all England with a kiss,
Bright over Europe fell her golden hair.