Chalk Vespers 1847 Mary Anning, Palaeontology pioneer, Vanishes from the Upper World. Her Spirit, with Cephalopod agility, Enters the chalk-pored Dorset Downs near Lyme, Harrowing the holloways of The Great Ridgeway, as it glances Stonehenge and Wayland Smithy waymarks. Crests the Chilterns at Ivinghoe Beacon, Grooving the ancient droves of Icknield Way, until it lopes into an Eleventh-hour chicane at Knettishall Heath. From where, Drawn by the timber-circled Seahenge lodestone, and Shadowing the progress of Penitents along Peddars Way, it Emerges at Holme. Following the setting sun to The Wash, Mary Anning’s spirit Nests itself in the dreams of one Henry L'Estrange Styleman Le Strange Who, sensing a gathering Apocalypse - Uncovering, Unfolding - Seeks to eclipse his north-winded Fishing village with a West-facing wise folly. Gothic-revival reverie bodied forth in Honeystone-Town, Hunstanton, Quarried and fashioned from the very Carrstone that edges out Albion in the Layer-Cake Cliffs, Where Solstice-sun illumination of Ancient barrows has since Become a nightly Vespers: Stratified slice of Earth’s Deep-Time testimonies Bathed in an Evening light that Sanctifies seventy-seven Million years of the Cretaceous. Man’s two-millennia Tenure as Crown of Creation: Guttering lantern glow that Cuts a Faltering path through the Gloaming. © Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025
Map of the Great Chalk Way network of long-distance paths, starting at Lyme Regis, Dorset in southwest England, and ending at Holme-next-the-Sea in Norfolk, East Anglia. Mary Anning's ghost/spirit follows this route in the poem.
©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2021 Layer-Cake Cliffs at Hunstanton, Norfolk, England.
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©Jan Peters/Solivagant Wisdom, 2025/2021
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