Written at Penshurst in Autumn 1788
Charlotte Turner Smith
Ye towers sublime! deserted now and drear!
Ye woods! deep sighing to the hollow blast,
The musing wanderer loves to linger near,
While History points to all your glories past:
And startling from their haunts the timid deer,
To trace the walks obscured by matted fern,
Which Waller's soothing lyre were wont to hear,
But where now clamours the discordant hern!
The spoiling hand of Time may overturn
These lofty battlements, and quite deface
The fading canvass whence we love to learn
Sydney's keen look, and Sacharissa's grace;
But fame and beauty still defy decay,
Saved by the historic page-the poet's tender lay!
There's something about the great stately home at Penshurst which made poets write about it through hundreds of years. Ben Jonson's poem about the is regarded as the archetypal topographical poem.
Penshurst Place was built in the fourteenth century and was long been the seat of the prominent Sydney family.
