“with my hands I hewed a house
Out of a craggy rock of stone;
And livèd like a Palmer poore
Within that Cave myself alone;
“And daily came to beg my bread
Of Phyllis at my Castle gate;
Not known unto my loving wife,
Who daily mournèd for her mate.
“Till at the last I fell sore sicke,
Yea, sicke so sore that I must die;
I sent to her a ring of golde,
By which she knew me presentlye.
“So she, repairing to the Cave,
Before that I gave up the Ghost,
Herself closed up my dying Eyes—
My Phyllis fair whom I loved most.”
His statue stands in the little shrine above the cliff; his arms lie in Warwick Castle; and in the cave over our head is carved a Saxon inscription, which the learned interpret into this: “Cast out, thou Christ, from thy servant this burden.”
We pass on by Rock Mill, haunted of many kingfishers; by Emscote Bridge, where the Avon is joined by the Leam, and where Warwick and Leamington have reached out their arms to each other till they now join hands; by little gardens, each with its punt or home-made boat beside the river steps; by a flat meadow, where the citizens and redcoats from Warwick garrison sit all day and wait for the fish that never bites; and suddenly, by the famous one-span bridge, see Warwick Castle full ahead, its massy foundations growing, as it seems, from the living rock, and Cæsar’s glorious tower soaring above the elms where Mill Street ends at the water’s brink. Here once crossed a Gothic bridge, carrying the traffic from Banbury. Its central arches are down now; but the bastions yet stand, and form islets for the brier and ivy, and between them the stream swirls fast for the weir and the ancient mill, by which it rushes down into the park. We turn our canoe, and with many a backward look paddle back to the boat-house at Emscote.
OLD BRIDGE, WARWICK
Evening has drawn in, and still we are pacing Warwick streets. We have seen the castle; have gazed from the armory windows upon the racing waters, steep terraces, and gentle park below; have climbed Guy’s Tower and seen far beneath us, on the one side, broad cedars and green lawns where the peacocks strut; on the other, the spires,
