Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, IN THE COUNTRY OF GILBERT WHITE (OBIIT JUNE 26, 1793), by VICTOR GUSTAVE PLARR


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

IN THE COUNTRY OF GILBERT WHITE (OBIIT JUNE 26, 1793), by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Ghosts of great men in london town
Last Line: We love her servant much!
Subject(s): History; London; Nature; Pride; White, Gilbert (1720-1793); Historians; Self-esteem; Self-respect


Ghosts of great men in London town
Confuse the brains of such as dream,
But here betwixt this hanging down
And this great moorland, waste and brown,
One only reigns supreme.

In Wolmer Forest, old and wide,
Along each sandy pine-girt glade
And lonesome heather-bordered ride,
A gentle presence haunts your side,
A gracious reverend shade.

And as you pass by Blackmoor grim
And stand at gaze on Temple height,
Methinks the fancy grows less dim:
Methinks you really talk with him
Who once was Gilbert White!

For yonder lies his own true love,
His little Selborne, dreaming still:
The shapely 'Hanger' towers above,
Girt with its beautiful beech grove,
Like some old Grecian hill!

And there th' abrupt and comely 'Nore'
Guards that wild world of bloom and bird
Where his clear patient sense of yore
Conned sights and sounds, which ne'er before
Sweet poets saw or heard.

And here, hard by, the nightingale
For the first time in springtide sang,
While Gilbert listened; here the pale
First blackthorn flowered, while down the gale
The cuckoo's mockeries rang!

And there rathe swallows would appear,
To whirl on high their first gavotte;
And there the last of the great deer
Fell on a winter midnight clear
'Neath a 'night-hunter's' shot.

We know it all! Familiar, too,
Seems this quaint hamlet 'neath the steeps,—
House, 'Pleystor,' church, and churchyard yew
And the plain headstone, hid from view,
Where their historian sleeps.

'Twas just a century gone by
They laid the simple cleric here:
Th' old world was in her agony,
And 'Nature! Reason!' was the cry
In that historic year.

But Oh! another Nature 'twas
That ruled him with her magic touch,
A mistress of delightful laws,
Whom still we learn to love because
We love her servant much!





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