St Vincent’s Cave, also known as the Giant’s Cave, is 250 ft above the valley floor. The underground passage from the Observatory was cut out by William West. The cave is said to have been connected with the ancient chapel of St. Vincent’s; some pieces of carved masonry were discovered there. Before the tunnel was built, the only access was from below. This would have been the route Southey took. His poem, ‘Inscription for a Cavern that Overlooks the River Avon’, is unusual in the way that it adapts landscape to autobiographical concerns: the cave becomes ‘my cavern’. Elsewhere, Southey’s treatment of place in poetry is strikingly historical rather than personal. Here, however, the possessive pronoun perhaps reminiscent of the time Southey spent there as a boy, exploring the caves and woods, seeking out the bee-orchis, violets and cowslips, with a friend. The poem, published in 1797, reads:
Enter this cavern, Stranger! Here, awhile Respiring from the long and steep ascent, Thou mayst be glad of rest, and haply too Of shade, if from the summer's westering sun Sheltered beneath this beetling vault of rock. Round the rude portal clasping its rough arms, The antique ivy spreads a canopy, From whose gray blossoms the wild bees collect In autumn their last store. The Muses love This spot; believe a Poet who hath felt Their visitation here. The tide below, Rising or refluent, scarcely sends its sound Of waters up ; and from the heights beyond, Where the high-hanging forest waves and sways, Varying before the wind its verdant hues, The voice is music here. Here thou mayst feel How good, how lovely. Nature! And when, hence Returning to the city's crowded streets, Thy sickening eye at every step revolts From scenes of vice and wretchedness, reflect That Man creates the evil he endures.
When Wordsworth subscribed to Southey's memorial (in Bristol Cathedral), he said he would have preferred to see it in the woods near St. Vincent's Rock.
