Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, ed. Poems of Places: An Anthology in 31 Volumes.
England: Vols. I–IV. 1876–79.

Ledbury

St. Catherine of Ledbury

By William Wordsworth (1770–1850)

WHEN human touch (as monkish books attest)

Nor was applied nor could be, Ledbury bells

Broke forth in concert flung adown the dells,

And upward, high as Malvern’s cloudy crest;

Sweet tones, and caught by a noble lady blest

To rapture! Mabel listened at the side

Of her loved mistress; soon the music died,

And Catherine said, Here I set up my rest.

Warned in a dream, the wanderer long had sought

A home that by such miracle of sound

Must be revealed: she heard it now, or felt

The deep, deep joy of a confiding thought;

And there, a saintly anchoress, she dwelt

Till she exchanged for heaven that happy ground.