Lulworth / Lulwind Cove
Lulwind Cove : The almost always beautiful Lulworth Cove, smugglers haunt, iconic tourist spot, popular geology school visit and according to ringleader of the Portland Spy Ring, Harry Houghton was where he aided Soviet spies coming ashore in the 1950's just weeks before British Intelligence services arrested them all.
#lulworth #lulworthcove #jurassiccoast #weldestate #lulwindcove #thomashardy #johnkeats #brightstar #farfromthemaddingcrowd
In Thomas Hardy's 1874 novel 'Far from the Madding Crowd', this is where one of Bathsheba’s suitors, the favoured Sergeant Troy takes a dramatic swim in the waters: “Troy came to a small basin of sea enclosed by the cliffs […] He undressed and plunged in. Inside the cove the water was uninteresting to a swimmer, being smooth as a pond, and to get a little of the ocean swell, Troy presently swam between the two projecting spurs of rock which formed the pillars of Hercules to this miniature Mediterranean,” whereupon he was swept out to sea and presumed drowned, only to make a dramatic reappearance.
This was where the poet John Keats spent his last ever (supposedly) day in England bound for Italy carrying with him one of the last poems that he wrote, the sonnet ‘Bright Star'.
Thomas Hardy's poem about this visit:
*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."
Lulworth / Lulwind Cove
Lulwind Cove : The almost always beautiful Lulworth Cove, smugglers haunt, iconic tourist spot, popular geology school visit and according to ringleader of the Portland Spy Ring, Harry Houghton was where he aided Soviet spies coming ashore in the 1950's just weeks before British Intelligence services arrested them all.
#lulworth #lulworthcove #jurassiccoast #weldestate #lulwindcove #thomashardy #johnkeats #brightstar #farfromthemaddingcrowd
In Thomas Hardy's 1874 novel 'Far from the Madding Crowd', this is where one of Bathsheba’s suitors, the favoured Sergeant Troy takes a dramatic swim in the waters: “Troy came to a small basin of sea enclosed by the cliffs […] He undressed and plunged in. Inside the cove the water was uninteresting to a swimmer, being smooth as a pond, and to get a little of the ocean swell, Troy presently swam between the two projecting spurs of rock which formed the pillars of Hercules to this miniature Mediterranean,” whereupon he was swept out to sea and presumed drowned, only to make a dramatic reappearance.
This was where the poet John Keats spent his last ever (supposedly) day in England bound for Italy carrying with him one of the last poems that he wrote, the sonnet ‘Bright Star'.
Thomas Hardy's poem about this visit:
*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."