dots-menu
×

Home  »  Poems of Places An Anthology in 31 Volumes  »  Mendip Hills over Wells

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
England: Vols. I–IV. 1876–79.

Mendip Hills

Mendip Hills over Wells

By Henry Alford (1810–1871)

HOW grand beneath the feet that company

Of steep gray roofs and clustering pinnacles

Of the massy fane, brooding in majesty

Above the town that spreads among the dells!

Hark! the deep clock unrolls its voice of power;

And sweetly mellowed sound of chiming bells

Calling to prayer from out the central tower

Over the thickly timbered hollow dwells.

Meet worship-place for such a glorious stretch

Of sunny prospect, for these mighty hills,

And that dark solemn Tor, and all that reach

Of bright-green meadows, laced with silver rills,

Bounded by ranges of pale blue, that rise

To where white strips of sea are traced upon the skies.