Silbury

 

It is International Archaeology Day, the third Saturday in the month of October. And Silbury Hill went through my wallpaper on the computer.  It stands proud in the landscape,  often surrounded by water, the information says

Silbury Hill in Wiltshire, England, may seem like a simple slope in the countryside. However, it conceals a 4,500-year-old Neolithic enigma. Starting around 2400 BCE, chalk was locally quarried, transported and compacted by hand, layer by layer, over generations. The result is the tallest prehistoric mound in Europe, built entirely by human effort, rising to over 39 metres.

There were actually three mounds built within a few miles of each other.  The Marlborough Mound, standing conspicuously in the grounds of Marlborough College, school to many a British scholar, and in the Pewsey Valley, Marden Mound now razed to the ground over the centuries.  The Marlborough Mound, only recently seen as a Neolithic monument is  rather messed up by being part of the school's playground.

But to return to Silbury, Paul's great love and where he wanted his ashes thrown, though this later translated to the Yorkshire village we had settled in and loved.  The flat top is something of a conundrum, some would argue that it was a Saxon defense.  Marlborough was a Saxon town and there were several battles fought in the area.  Other theories have it as a catchment area for water or a copy of the Egyptian pyramids.

I have written so much about the hill I shall stop but leave you with an old photograph taken by Jacquetta Hawkes.  The photo must be about 70 years old but the hill is still the same but throwing a great cone shaped shadow. 

 Bones of our wild forefathers

O forgive,
If now we pierce the chambers of your rest,
And open your dark pillows to the eye
Of the irreverent Day!
Hark, as we move,
Runs no stern whisper through the narrow vault?
Flickers no shape across our torch-light pale,
With backward beckoning arm?
No, all is still.
O that it were not!
O that sound or sign,
Vision, or legend, or the eagle glance
Of science, could call back thy history lost,
Green Pyramid of the plains, from far-ebbed Time!
O that the winds which kiss thy flowery turf
Could utter how they first beheld thee rise;
When in his toil the jealous Savage paused,
Drew deep his chest, pushed back his yellow hair,
And scanned the growing hill with reverent gaze,
-Or haply, how they gave their fitful pipe**
To join the chant prolonged o'er warriors cold
. -Or how the Druid's mystic robe they swelled;
Or from thy blackened brow on wailing wing
The solemn sacrificial ashes bore,
To strew them where now smiles the yellow corn,
Or where the peasant treads the Churchward***path

Emmeline Fisher

An unknown poet from Wiltshire, but her mother was a first cousin of Wordsworth.  Born 1825 and died in 1864.  Some information on Emmeline to be found here and here on Emmeline's poetry (Wordsworth thought she was a genius)