Here,
September the 9, in the year of our Lord 1680,
Was buried a true Englishman,
Who in Berkshire was well known
To love his country’s freedom ’bove his own,
But living immured full twenty year,
Had time to write, as does appear,HIS EPITAPH.
H ere, or elsewhere (all’s one to you, to me),
E arth, air, or water, gripes my ghostly dust;
N o one knows how soon to be by fire set free.
R eader, if you an oft-tried rule will trust,
Y ou will gladly do and suffer what you must.M y life was spent in serving you,
A nd death’s my pay (it seems), and welcome too;
R evenge destroying but itself, while I
T o birds of prey leave my old cage and fly.
E xamples preach to th’ eye, care then (mine says)
N ot how you end, but how you spend your days.
The church was part of the chapel of a priory of Benedictine monks, founded here soon after the Conquest; and is interesting from its architecture, being for the greater part in the early Norman style, but with ornamented gothic windows—and a tower adorned by the taste of the present age with Greek pilasters!
CHAPTER XIII.
Piercefield—Points of view—Curious appearance—Scenic character of the place—View from Wyndcliff—Account of Valentine Morris—Anecdotes—The Wye below Chepstow—Aust Ferry—Black Rock Ferry—St. Theodric—Conclusion.
The romantic region of Piercefield, extending from Chepstow to Wyndcliff—a distance of about three miles by the sinuous walk, is one of the grand attractions of this place. It is nothing more, it is true, than a gentleman’s park; but then the landscape gardener by whom this park was laid out is Nature herself, who has lavished here her beauty, her grandeur, and her romance, in the wildest profusion. Art is entirely subservient to her purposes, opening the view where it was shut in, and forming paths for the pilgrim foot that would approach to worship.
“In the composition of the scenery,” says the historical tourist, “the meandering Wye, the steep cliffs, and the fertile peninsula of Lancaut, form the striking characteristics.
“The Wye, which is everywhere seen from a great elevation, passes between Wyndcliff and the Bangor rocks, winds round the peninsula of Lancaut, under a semicircular chain of stupendous cliffs, is lost in its sinuous course, and again appears in a straight line at the foot of the Lancaut rocks, and flows under the majestic ruins of Chepstow Castle towards the Severn.
“The rocks are broken into a variety of fantastic shapes, and scattered at different heights and different positions: they start abruptly from the river, swell into gentle acclivities, or hang on the summits of the hills; here they form a perpendicular rampart, these jet into enormous projections, and impend over the water.
“But their dizzy heights and abrupt precipices are softened by the woods which form a no less conspicuous feature in the romantic scenery; they are not meagre plantations placed by art, but a tract of forests scattered by the hand of nature. In one place they expand into open groves of large oak, elm, and beech; in another form a shade of timber trees, copses, and underwood, hiding all external objects, and wholly impervious to the rays of the sun, they start from the crevices of the rocks, feather their edges, crown their summits, clothe their sides, and fill the intermediate hollows with a luxuriant mass of foliage, bring to recollection of the border
“‘Of Eden, where delicious paradise,
Now nearer, crowns with her enclosure green,
As with a rural mound, the champaign head
Of a steep wilderness, whose hairy sides,
With thicket o’ergrown, grotesque and wild,
Access denied, and over head up grew
Insuperable height of loftiest shade,* * * * * *
A sylvan scene and as the banks ascend
Shade above shade, a woody theatre
Of stateliest view.’”