MY MOOR
Purple with heather, and golden
with gorse,
Stretches the moorland
for mile after mile;
Over it cloud-shadows float in
their course,—
Grave thoughts passing
athwart a smile,—
Till the shimmering distance, grey
and gold,
Drowns all in a glory manifold.
O the blue butterflies quivering
there,
Hovering, flickering,
never at rest,
Quickened flecks of the upper air
Brought down by seeing
the earth so blest;
And the grasshoppers shrilling
their quaint delight
At having been born in a world so
bright!
Overhead circles the lapwing slow,
Waving his black-tipped
curves of wings,
Calling so clearly that I, as I go,
Call back an answering
"Peewit," that brings
The sweep of his circles so low as
he flies
That I see his green plume, and the
doubt in his eyes.
Harebell and crowfoot and bracken
and ling
Gladden my heart as it
beats all aglow
In a brotherhood true with each
living thing,
From the crimson-tipped
bee, and the chaffer slow,
And the small lithe lizard, with
jewelled eye,
To the lark that has lost herself
far in the sky.
Ay me, where am I? for here I sit
With bricks all round
me, bilious and brown;
And not a chance this summer to
quit
The bustle and roar and
the cries of town,
Nor to cease to breathe this
over-breathed air,
Heavy with toil and bitter with
care.
Well,—face it and chase it, this
vain regret;
Which would I choose,
to see my moor
With eyes such as many that I have
met,
Which see and are
blind, which all wealth leaves poor,
Or to sit, brick-prisoned, but free
within,
Freeborn by a charter no gold can
win?
Emma Hubbard (née Evans) 1897 Kew