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

Plumpton

Plumpton

By Ebenezer Elliott (1781–1849)

WHO would not here become a hermit? here

Grow old in song? here die, on Nature’s breast

Hushed, like yon wild bird on the lake, to rest?

Then laid asleep beneath the branches sere,

Till the Awakener in the east appear,

And call the dead to judgment? Quietness,

Methinks the heart-whole rustic loves thee less

Than the town’s thought-worn smiler. O, most dear

Art thou to him who flies from care to bowers

That breathe of sainted calmness! and to me

More welcome than the breath of hawthorn flowers

To children of the city, when delight

Leads them from smoke to cowslips, is the sight

Of these green shades, those rocks, this little sea.