AN IMMORTALITY OF GOOD, EXETER, 1842.

 WRITTEN ON THE BANK OVER BELLE-ISLE FIELD

I have been toss’d, how rudely toss’d,

Upon the troubled tide of things -

Now in th’ abyss of misery lost,

Now borne on high on rapture’s wings:

And fifty busy years have shed

Their griefs, their joys, upon my head.

And now I sit in quiet thought

Upon the very bank where oft

I sat in buoyant youth - and nought

Is changed: the self same birds aloft

Seem to flit o’er me - while below

The ancient tranquil waters flow.

The island field, we call’d the fair,

Besprinkled yet with bathing boys,

Is there: the trembling reeds are there

And the mole-hillocks -and the noise

Of Isca dancing o’er the weir -

The herds - the elms - the bees are there.

The breeze as fresh as in its prime -

The hills as green - the plain as gay -

Here lovely nature laughs at time,

And never knew a yesterday:

And many a morrow’s eye shall see

The beauteous things that round us be.

O happy that while death and birth

Triumph o’er man from year to year -

The more enduring charms of earth,

Their light, their love, their music bear -

Triumphant through vicissitude,

An immortality of good.

J.B.   Sept. 3 1842.

These verses grace The Western Times of 10th September 1842. I had never heard of Belle Isle Field but it sounded glorious and I was intrigued. I find that Belle Isle Park is the City's newest park. I visited it and was underwhelmed but it still has potential to become again, two hundred years, almost, after J.B.'s poem, a place where many a morrow's eye shall see/ the beauties that around us be.

Exeter's glory is that it has so many green spaces. If parks and gardens were given the attention and the money they deserve, the City would reap great benefit from its greenness. We may now be short of moles, bees, elms and herds but we still have more green space than most cities. What we seem to lack is qualified gardeners and imaginative planners.