March 8 Hardy

In March 1870 Thomas Hardy, then an architect, was commissioned to go to the church of St Juliot in Cornwall to take particulars for a proposed re-building. There he met the Rector’s sister-in- law, Emma Gifford, who later became his wife. The excitement of this venture, and its happy outcome are expressed in the poem “ When I set out for Lyonnesse”
Lyonnesse is properly the fabled land now under the sea between Land’s End and the Scillies, but is here used as a romantic name for Cornwall:

When I set out for Lyonnesse,
A hundred miles away,
The rime was on the spray,
And starlight lit my lonesomeness
When I set out for Lyonnesse
A hundred miles away.What would bechance at Lyonnesse
While I should sojourn there
No prophet durst declare,
Nor did the wisest wizard guess
What would bechance at Lyonnesse
While I should sojourn there.When I came back from Lyonnesse
With magic in my eyes,
All marked with mute surmise
My radiance rare and fathomless,
When I came back from Lyonnesse
With magic in my eyes!

St-Juliot-Church

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