God's Hills

IN our hill-country of the North, The rainy skies are soft and grey, And rank on rank the clouds go forth, And rain in orderly array Treads the mysterious flanks of hills That stood before our race began, And still shall stand when Sorrow spills Her last tear on the dust of man.

There shall the mists in beauty break And clinging tendrils finely drawn, A rose and silver glory make About the silent feet of dawn;

Till Gable clears his iron sides And Bowfell's wrinkled front appears, And Scawfell's clustered might derides The menace of the marching years.

The tall men of that noble land Who share such high companionship, Are scorners of the feeble hand, Contemners of the faltering lip. When all the ancient truths depart, In every strait that men confess, Stands in the stubborn Cumbrian heart The spirit of that steadfastness.

In quiet valleys of the hills The humble grey stone crosses lie, And all day long the curlew shrills And all day long the wind goes by. But on some stifling alien plain The flesh of Cumbrian men is thrust In shallow pits, and cries in vain To mingle with its kindred dust.

Yet those make death a little thing Who know the settled works of God, Winds that heard Latin watchwords ring From ramparts where the Roman trod. Stars that beheld the last King's crown Flash in the steel-grey mountain tarn, And ghylls that cut the live rock down Before Kings ruled in Ispahan.