My Forefathers Had Dwelt For Generations Beside It,
Listening All Their Lives Long To Its Music, And When They
Left It They Still Loved It In Exile, And Died At Last With
Its Music In Their Ears.
Nor did the connection end there;
their children and children's children doubtless had some
inherited memory of it; or how came I to have this feeling,
which made it sacred, and drew me to it?
We inherit not from
our ancestors only, but, through them, something, too, from
the earth and place that knew them.
I sought for and found it where it takes its rise on open
Exmoor; a simple moorland stream, not wild and foaming and
leaping over rocks, but flowing gently between low peaty
banks, where the little lambs leap over it from side to side
in play. Following the stream down, I come at length to
Exford. Here the aspect of the country begins to change; it
is not all brown desolate heath; there are green flowery
meadows by the river, and some wood. A little further down
and the Exe will be a woodland stream; but of all the rest of
my long walk I shall only say that to see the real beauty of
this stream one must go to Somerset. From Exford to Dulverton
it runs, singing aloud, foam-flecked, between high hills
clothed to their summits in oak woods: after its union with
the Barle it enters Devonshire as a majestic stream, and flows
calmly through a rich green country; its wild romantic charm
has been left behind.
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