Beeny

For other uses, see Beeny (surname).

Beeny is a hamlet in north Cornwall, England, UK. It lies in a sheltered valley near the coast two miles (3 km) northeast of Boscastle.

Beeny
Beeny Cliff
Beeny Location within Cornwall
OS grid reference	SX1192
Shire county	Cornwall
Region	South West
Country	England
Sovereign state	United Kingdom
Post town	BOSCASTLE
Postcode district	PL35
Police	Devon and Cornwall
Fire	Cornwall
Ambulance	South Western

Literary allusions

Very specifically there is a poem by Thomas Hardy, perhaps better known for his prose works.

Beeny Cliff

March 1870 - March 1913

O the opal and the sapphire of that wandering western sea

And the woman riding high above with bright hair flapping free -

The woman who I loved so, and who loyally loved me.

The pale mews plained below us, and the waves seemed far away

In a nether sky, engrossed in saying their ceaseless babbling say,

As we laughed light-heartedly aloft on that clear-sunned March day.

A little cloud then cloaked us, and there flew an irised rain.

And the Atlantic dyed its levels with a dull misfeatured stain,

And then the sun burst out again, and purples prinked the main.

- Still in all its chasmal beauty bulks old Beeny to the sky,

And shall she and I not go there once again now March is nigh,

And the sweet things said in that March say anew there by and by?

What if still in chasmal beauty looms that wild weird western shore,

The woman now is - elsewhere - whom the ambling pony bore,

And nor knows nor cares for Beeny, and will laugh there nevermore.

Further, in "A Death-Day Recalled," collected in Satires of Circumstance (1914), Thomas Hardy wrote:

Beeny did not quiver,
  Juliot grew not gray,
Thin Vallency's river
  Held its wonted way.
Bos seemed not to utter
  Dimmest note of dirge,
Targan mouth a mutter
  To its creamy surge.

Yet though these, unheeding,
  Listless, passed the hour
Of her spirit's speeding,
  She had, in her flower,
Sought and loved the places
  Much and often pined
For their lonely faces
  When in towns confined.

Why did not Vallency
  In his purl deplore
One whose haunts were whence he
  Drew his limpid store?
Why did Bos not thunder,
  Targan apprehend
Body and Breath were sunder
  Of their former friend?

Notable residents

• Henry Chidley Reynolds (1849–1925), a New Zealand farm manager, butter manufacturer and exporter, was born at Beeny.

External links

Media related to Beeny at Wikimedia Commons