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And what wickedly bad verse!
I remember coming down on to Stamford one July morning (I was following the Roman road across Burleigh Park, and so down to the river), when I saw in the window of a little shop among the first houses of the town, hither of the bridge, a card; an ornamented card; a florally ornamented card, put up for sale. It was a set of verses all about a rich man who owned Burleigh, that great house, and who married a young woman much poorer than himself. I read them and paid little attention to them. I thought they were some local thing made up to sell in a charity. But a little way on I found another set in another window, and then another, all just the same. I read them again, and something familiar echoed in my mind; something of childhood ... I sought.... There was an odd connection with "Locksley Hall." Yet what had "Locksley Hall" to do with Burleigh? Then it broke in on me like an evil-doer breaking sacred locks: Tennyson! Tennyson had written this amazing thing!