Late Lyrics and Earlier

At Lulworth Cove

A CENTURY BACK

Had I but lived a hundred years ago

I might have gone, as I have gone this year,

By Warmwell Cross on to a Cove I know,

And Time have placed his finger on me there:

"YOU SEE THAT MAN?"--I might have looked, and said,

"O yes: I see him. One that boat has brought

Which dropped down Channel round Saint Alban's Head.

So commonplace a youth calls not my thought."

"YOU SEE THAT MAN?"--"Why yes; I told you; yes:

Of an idling town-sort; thin; hair brown in hue;

And as the evening light scants less and less

He looks up at a star, as many do."

"YOU SEE THAT MAN?"--"Nay, leave me!" then I plead,

"I have fifteen miles to vamp across the lea,

And it grows dark, and I am weary-kneed:

I have said the third time; yes, that man I see!

"Good. That man goes to Rome--to death, despair;

And no one notes him now but you and I:

A hundred years, and the world will follow him there,

And bend with reverence where his ashes lie."

September 1920.

Note.--In September 1820 Keats, on his way to Rome, landed one day on

the Dorset coast, and composed the sonnet, "Bright star! would I were

steadfast as thou art." The spot of his landing is judged to have

been Lulworth Cove.