~ Prospect cottage ~

Perhaps the most famous house is Prospect Cottage, formerly owned by the late artist and film director Derek Jarman. The cottage itself is painted black, with a poem, part of John Donne's "The Sunne Rising", written on one side in black lettering. The garden however is the main attraction. Reflecting the bleak, windswept landscape of the peninsula, Derek Jarman's garden is made of pebbles, driftwood, scrap metal and a few hardy plants.

 

~~~ The Sunne Rising ~~~

Busy old fool, unruly Sun,

Why dost thou thus,

Through windows and through curtains call on us?

Must to thy motions lovers' seasons run?

Saucy pedantic wretch, go chide

Late schoolboys and sour 'prentices,

Go tell court huntsmen that the King will ride,

Call country ants to harvest offices;

Love, all alike, no season knows, nor clime,

Nor hours, days, months, which are the rags of time.

 

Thy beams, so reverend and strong

Why shoulds't thou think?

I could eclipse and cloud them with a wink,

But that I would not lose her sight so long;

If her eyes have not blinded thine,

Look, and tomorrow late, tell me,

Whether both th'Indias of spice and mine

Be where thou left'st them, or lie here with me?

Ask for those kings whom thou saw'st yesterday,

And thou shalt hear, 'All here in one bed lay.'

 

She's all states, and all princes, I;

Nothing else is.

Princes do but play us; compared to this,

All honour's mimic, all wealth alchemy.

Thou, Sun, art half as happy as we,

In that the world's contracted thus;

Thine age asks ease, and since thy duties be

To warm the world, that's done in warming us.

Shine here, to us, and thou art everywhere;

This bed thy centre is, these walls, thy sphere.

 

Done