Pick the scenic routes you wish to travel and pack poetry relevant to the places you intend to visit so that you can ponder, reflect and create appropriate pauses as you journey. Not all of our properties have poems actually dedicated to them but Helen’s Tower in Bangor, Co. Down formed the inspiration for two beautiful poems. Imagine gifting these poems to a loved one as a special clue for a surprise trip you have planned for them. Is an enchanting three-storey tower that sleeps two, not as romantic as it gets? Find out all the glorious detail about Helen’s Tower and hopefully take a moment to enjoy the poems below.
HELEN’S TOWER by ALFRED TENNYSON
HELEN’S TOWER, here I stand,
Dominant over sea and land.
Son’s love built me and I hold
Mother’s love in letter’d gold. Love is
in and out of time,
I am mortal stone and lime.
Would my granite girth were strong
As either love, to last as long
I should wear my crown entire
To and thro’ the Doomsday fire,
And be found of angel eyes
In earth’s recurring Paradise.
———-
HELEN’S TOWER by ROBERT BROWNING
Who hears of Helen’s Tower,
may dream perchance
How the Greek Beauty from the
Scaean Gate
Gazed on old friends unanimous in
hate,
Death-doomd because of her fair countenance.
Hearts would leap otherwise, at thy
advance,
Lady, to whom this Tower is
consecrate!
Like hers, thy face once made all
eyes elate,
Yet, unlike hers, was blessd by every
glance.
The Tower of Hate is outworn, far
and strange:
A transitory shame of long ago,
It dies into the sand from which it
sprang;
But thine, Loves rock-built Tower,
shall fear no change:
Gods self laid stable earths
foundations so,
When all the morning-stars together
sang.