Page:Over fen and wold; (IA overfenwold00hissiala).pdf/360

 over its sandy shallows with many musical murmurings.

Along the road we had come Tennyson in his youth must often have roamed and tarried, for he was in love with the eldest daughter of Mr. Henry Sellwood of Horncastle; and Dame Rumour has it that he composed many of his early poems during those wanderings to and fro between Somersby and that town. The pleasant stretch of country that the road traverses has apparently little, if at all, changed since that time; so, much as it looked to us, must it have looked to the poet, with its leafy woods, its green meadows, its golden cornfields sloping to the sun, with the bounding wolds around, that beautify whilst limiting the prospect.

So driving on we came at last to old-world Somersby, a tiny hamlet that has never heard the sound of the railway whistle, nor known the hand of the modern builder, a spot that might be a hundred miles from anywhere, and seems successfully to avoid the outer world, whilst in turn the outer world as carefully avoids it! Most happy Somersby! We had found Arcadia at last! In this remote nook Time itself seems to be napping, very tenderly has it dealt with the poet's birthplace and the scenes of his boyhood around. Here it is always yesterday. A peace that is not of our time broods incumbent over it, a tranquillity that has been handed down unimpaired from ages past lingers lovingly around.

On one side of the little-travelled road and a trifle back therefrom stands the rambling rectory, with its home-like, yellow-washed walls, and ridged