"Or the eagle glance Of science, could call back thy history lost"

 

I have written so much about Silbury, that this enigmatic monument too goodness knows what, remains inside me as a teller (or should that be the tiller?) of my life.  It was the place that I stopped at on my way to settle in Wales and decided to stop at the town of Calne and buy a house there instead.  I studied archaeology, married the lecturer and made journey's from Bath to walk my dog there.  But always taking in the prehistoric landscape that lay so closely underfoot.  Avebury stones, East and West Kennet long barrows, the Ridgeway with its round barrows, some of them Roman.  I marvelled at lives that had gone before me.  Then of course I met Paul there outside the Red Lion pub, I suppose it was a date.  He said something cheeky about the sun hat I was wearing. 

The hat, which at this very moment, I have been searching for to take on our trip to Surrey.  We are having a hot Bank Holiday  this weekend.  So a train journey down to London, poor Andrew had to travel to London for a meeting yesterday but will be back tonight to do the same journey again.  We are also meeting Lillie in London who is also coming but she will be camping out in the garden.

But as I went through the blogs I have written about Silbury I came across a poem, written by 12 year old Emmeline Fisher, she was the second cousin of Wordsworth.  It was found inside Silbury 150 years later.  I remember at the time when Silbury was being restored by the firm Skanska, the villagers in Avebury wanted to put into the hill a similar time capsule.  But it was refused by the archaeologists because it could have caused damage in the future.

As a note, Druidism was rife in the Victorian age, it covered all the prehistoric archaeological stuff with plenty of fanciful stories. The Roman writers, including Tacitus, have a lot to answer for when they subdued the natives of this country;)

Hidden poem by Wordsworth’s niece published | OurDailyRead

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

Edit. There is actually another poem written by an American girl in the 19th century in similar vein about Avebury.  Her ancestor was Oliver Cope, a tailor of Awbury (as it was then called).  Oliver Cope was a dissenter who took his family in the 17th Century to America  they settled and a dynasty was born.  I have written about it here.  The girl was called Mary S, Cope, the date 1886.