From Aug 2006 - Nov 2013 WeDig provided a live forum for diggers & fans of Vindolanda. It has now been mothballed and will be maintained as a live archive.
Here you will find preserved 7 years of conversation, photos, & knowledge about a site many people love. Vindolanda gets under the skin. (Figuratively and literally as a volunteer excavator!) It's a place you remember, filled with people you remember!
Thanks for 7 great years!
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| Mary Webb's "Viroconium" | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Feb 18 2008, 08:01 PM (1,698 Views) | |
| SacoHarry | Feb 18 2008, 08:01 PM Post #1 |
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So every once in a while I hop over to Representative Poetry Online to try to get a little culture. Pick a poet at random, read a poem or two, and then usually forget it all by the next day. But I just stumbled on a great little one that some of y'all might like. She wrote it about Wroxeter, but a lot of imagery works for a certain northern fort. Mary Webb (1881-1927) Viroconium Virocon -- Virocon -- Still the ancient name rings on And brings, in the untrampled wheat, The tumult of a thousand feet. Where trumpets rang and men marched by, None passes but the dragon-fly. Athwart the grassy town, forlorn, The lone dor-beetle blows his horn, The poppy standards droop and fall Above one rent and mournful wall: In every sunset-flame it burns, Yet towers unscathed when day returns. And still the breaking seas of grain Flow havenless across the plain: The years wash on, their spindrift leaps Where the old city, dreaming, sleeps. Grief lingers here, like mists that lie Across the dawns of ripe July; On capital and corridor The pathos of the conqueror. The pillars stand, with alien grace, In churches of a younger race; The chiselled column, black and rough, Becomes a roadside cattle-trough: The skulls of men who, right or wrong, Still wore the splendour of the strong, Are shepherds' lanterns now, and shield Their candles in the lambing field. But when, through evening's open door, Two lovers tread the broken floor, And the wild-apple petals fall Round passion's scarlet festival; When cuckoos call from the green gloom Where dark, shelving forests loom; When foxes bark beside the gate, And the grey badger seeks his mate -- There haunts within them secretly One that lives while empires die, A shrineless god whose songs abide Forever in the countryside. Online text copyright © 2005, Ian Lancashire for the Department of English, University of Toronto. |
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