Stockworth Mill was situated about two miles along the banks of the Somersby Brook, the poet’s favourite walk, and might very well have inspired the setting of these beautiful verses.
I loved the brimming wave that swam
Thro’ quiet meadows round the mill,
The sleepy pool above the dam,
The pool beneath it never still.
The meal-sacks on the whiten’d floor,
The dark round of the dripping wheel,
The very air about the door
Made misty with the floating meal.
The Palace of Art
see [page 11]
In the volume of 1832, several stanzas of “The Palace of Art” were omitted, because Tennyson thought the poem was too full. “‘The Palace of Art,’” he wrote in 1890, “is the embodiment of my own belief that the Godlike life is with man and for man.”
Amongst the “marvellously compressed word pictures” of this poem is the beautiful one of our illustration on page 11.
Or in a clear-wall’d city on the sea,
Near gilded organ-pipes, her hair
Wound with white roses, slept St. Cecily;
An angel look’d at her.
Clevedon Church
see [page 14]
On the 15th of September, 1833, Arthur Hallam died suddenly at Vienna. His remains were brought to England, and laid finally to rest in the old and lonely church beside the sea at Clevedon, on January 3rd, 1834.