If thou chance for to find
  A new house to thy mind,
  And built without thy cost. 
    Be good to the poor
    As God gives thee store
  And then my labour’s not lost.

It was here that he composed most of his hymns, and here he died at what his friend Izaak Walton described in 1632 as “the good and more pleasant than healthful parsonage.”  A tablet inscribed “G.H. 1633” was all that marked the resting-place of “the sweetest singer that ever sang God’s praise.”  Bemerton, we thought, was a lovely little village, and there was a fig-tree and a medlar-tree in the rectory garden, which Herbert himself was said to have planted with his own hands.  Here we record one of his hymns: 

Let all the world in every corner sing
My God and King! 
The Heavens are not too high. 
His praises may thither fly;
The earth is not too low,
His praises there may grow. 
Let all the world in every corner sing
My God and King!

Let all the world in every corner sing
My God and King! 
The Church with psalms must shout,
No door can keep them out;
But above all the heart
Must bear the longest part. 
Let all the world in every corner sing
My God and King!

The old church of Chirbury belonged to the Herberts, and was noted for its heavy circular pillars supporting the roof, which, with the walls, were so much bent outwards that they gave one the impression that they would fall over; but nearly all the walls in old churches bend that way more or less, a fact which we always attributed to the weight of the heavy roof pressing on them.  At one village on our travels, however, we noticed, hanging on one of the pillars in the church, a printed tablet, which cleared up the mystery by informing us that the walls and pillars were built in that way originally to remind us that “Jesus on the cross His head inclined”; and we noticed that even the porches at the entrance to ancient churches were built in the same way, each side leaning outwards.

A great treat was in store for us this morning, for we had to pass through Wilton, with its fine park surrounding Wilton House, the magnificent seat of the Herberts, Earls of Pembroke and Montgomery.  Our first impression was that Wilton was one of the pleasantest places we had visited.  Wiltshire took its name from the river Wylye, which here joins the Nadder, so that Wilton had been an important place in ancient times, being the third oldest borough in England.  Egbert, the Wessex King, had his palace here, and in the great contest with Mercia defeated Beornwulf in 821 at Ellendune.  A religious house existed here in very early times.  In the reign of Edward I it was recorded that Osborn de Giffard, a relative of the abbess, carried off two of the nuns, and was sentenced for that offence to be stripped naked and to be whipped in the churches of Wilton and Shaftesbury, and as an additional punishment to serve three years in Palestine.  In the time of