"Why, if a man would wive An' thrive 'ithout a dow'r, Then let en look en out a wife In Blackmore by the Stour."
William Barnes was not a wild wooer, and he found joy and adventure in a smile and a blush from a Blackmore milkmaid after having carried her pail, and he was satisfied to know that she would have bowed when she took it back had it not been too heavy. Perhaps--O dizzy fancy!--sweet Nan of the Vale would not have refused a little kiss! At all events Barnes knew womanhood in its perfection when he met with it--the maid who was "good and true and fair" was his preference.
If we return, will England be Just England still to you and me? The place where we must earn our bread?-- We who have walked among the dead, And watched the smile of agony, And seen the price of Liberty, Which we have taken carelessly From other hands. Nay, we shall dread, If we return, Dread lest we hold blood-guiltily The thing that men have died to free. Oh, English fields shall blossom red In all the blood that has been shed, By men whose guardians are we, If we return. F. W. HARVEY.
Blandford, or, to give the town its full title, Blandford Forum, gets its name from the ancient ford of the Stour, on a bend of which river it is pleasingly placed in the midst of a bountiful district. It is called "Shottsford Forum" in Hardy's _Far from the Madding Crowd_, and in _The Woodlanders_ we are told that "Shottsford is Shottsford still: you can't victual your carcass there unless you've got money, and you can't buy a cup of genuine there whether or no." The long chief street of the town has a bright, modern aspect, due to the great fire of 1731 which destroyed all but forty houses in the place. There is nothing to detain the pilgrim here, but it makes a good centre for any who are exploring the country around it.
Five miles of rather hilly road brings us to Winterborne Whitchurch, which has a very interesting church containing a curious old font dated 1450 and a fine old pulpit removed from Milton. The grandfather of John and Charles Wesley was vicar here from 1658 to 1662. Of the poet George Turberville, born here about 1530, very little is known. He was one of the "wild" Turbervilles, and one would like to learn more about him. Anyway, here is a specimen of his verse: