Lover’s Leap, Bluff Park, Alabama

Posted

November 5, 2012

Beautiful overcast fall day today for my commute home from work. I wanted to head up to Bluff Park instead of my normal commute through Vestavia Hills. A little more than an hour into my ride, I found myself exploring the Lover’s Leap rocks up in Bluff Park with the cool inscription shown below (and narrated in the video above):

Lover’s Leap inscription. Scroll to the bottom of this post to see my best guess at what it says.

Here’s the rest of the pics from the day, plus one more video — the somewhat crazy descent from Crest Lane all the way down through the Green Valley roller coaster. I’ve put some bookmarks into the description on youtube so you can jump to specific spots of the video if you watch it on you tube and then click the timestamps in the description.

Tho W. Farrar
Seraphine F. Farrar
-------------------
To sit on rock ... head and fell
To slowly trace the forest's shady scene
Where things that own not in one dominion dwell
And mortal feet ... rarely been
August 20th
1827

“…” means I have no clue what that part of the poem says.

Comments

2 responses to “Lover’s Leap, Bluff Park, Alabama”

Warren

November 5, 2012

Brian – that’s Byron, “Solitude.”

To sit on rocks, to muse o’er flood and fell,
To slowly trace the forest’s shady scene,
Where things that own not man’s dominion dwell,
And mortal foot hath ne’er or rarely been;
To climb the trackless mountain all unseen,
With the wild flock that never needs a fold;
Alone o’er steeps and foaming falls to lean;
This is not solitude, ’tis but to hold
Converse with Nature’s charms, and view her stores unrolled.

But midst the crowd, the hurry, the shock of men,
To hear, to see, to feel and to possess,
And roam alone, the world’s tired denizen,
With none who bless us, none whom we can bless;
Minions of splendour shrinking from distress!
None that, with kindred consciousness endued,
If we were not, would seem to smile the less
Of all the flattered, followed, sought and sued;
This is to be alone; this, this is solitude!

Great post — looking forward to doing some riding if you’re around during the holidays.

W

Reply
1. kartoone
  
  November 5, 2012
  
  Thanks Warren, very cool that this was part of a larger poem. I can see why they didn’t carve the whole thing into the rock. I like what the larger one is saying, too. I can definitely relate to the full poem … never feel alone while riding but stick me in a crowd of people and I’d happily rather be back out riding. Definitely let’s ride when you get back in town!
  
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Lover’s Leap, Bluff Park, Alabama

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2 responses to “Lover’s Leap, Bluff Park, Alabama”

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