find their Land of Dreams
Lost in the moonlight of our streams.

THE HOLE OF HORCUM, NEAR WHITBY.

WANDER-THIRST

There's a drop of Romany blood in me,
    And days there are when it swirls and leaps
Like a river's race or a surging sea,
    Stirring to life all my calmer deeps.
        Then wandering, wandering must I go
        And the great, wide, open places know.

For out in the world the woods are awake,
    And I hear the voice of the calling Wind,
My wonderful wooer, my rough, sweet mate,
    And follow I must! Perchance I'll find
        His whip that drives the clouds o'er the fells,
        And cracks in the corrie, like short, sharp bells.

The wild Ever-during is calling for me,
    A missel's song and a curlew's cry,
Blent with a rivulet's minstrelsy,
    And the crooning voice of the fir-top's sigh.
        'Tis the great god Pan that I seek to find
        Borne on the wings of my lover Wind.

"O! make me one with the wondrous earth,
    God of the woods and the laughing rills!
Make me one with the lucent mirth
    Of the Sun as he rides o'er the gorse-loved hills.
        When I am gone and my singing is mute
        Give to my Lover my silent lute."

ROSEBERRY TOPPING.

THE ROAD

Over the moor in the velvet dusk
    Mysteriously it lies.
White thro' the heath and the swart fir woods
    White 'neath the twilit skies.

'Tis hid in the folds of the purple hills,
    Seeking a fern-fringed burn:
But it mounts again, then is lost once more,
    With a tremulous, misting turn.

Where blue mists gather beneath the moon
    It shows as a silvern stream.
O Path of Life, you are out of sight,
    And lost in a wistful dream.

JUGGER HOWE DALE.

THE SWALING* OF THE MOOR

Oh! Moorland in September
To love and to remember.

The air is still and sunlit,
    The moor's a russet bed,
The bracken's turning beryl,
    The whortle leaves are red.

Here stand five sister pine-trees,
    Gold-nimbussed by the sun;
And near, a slender rowan,
    Its scarlet reign begun.

A runnel near is singing
    A song of liquid glee,
A saucy, joyous blackbird
    Tilts bubbling notes at me.

Then in a magic circle
    Seven thick white smokes upcurl,
And forks of flame triumphant
    Like crimson flags unfurl.

They rise with grace, and slowly—
    Flower incense from the ling,
Repaying summer splendour
    By an autumn offering.

Oh! Moorland in September
To love and to remember.

WEST END, BLUBBERHOUSES.

* The annual burning of the heather.

THE MOORS IN SUMMER

Up to the moorlands a lingtit has flown—
(Another meadow has yet to be mown
Before the sun goes under the hill).
I will hie me down, for a drink, to the rill:
A wheatear mimics the whinchat's call,
And a cuckoo cries from the Woods of Wath
As a heron soars over the verdant strath,
And an ousel pipes from the grey stone wall.
                I drink in a dream—
The water flows from a Fairy Stream.
        For the smell of the ling my heart is a-yearn,
        And the sharp, sweet tang of a moorland burn.

The lingtit waited anent a gate
Where foxgloves held their midsummer fête,
Then on she sped o'er the feathery green
Of the bracken fronds, flying beneath and between,
Till she reached a dyke where the bents and moors
Stretched out to the sky in a rolling sea
Of wave upon wavelet of purpling glee,
O'er a land where the wistful lapwing lures.
                I sought to rest
On the moorland's soft, sweet, heathery breast,
        When out of the bilberries, spick and clean,
        A small man stepped, in a coat of green.

He bowed to the earth, with an old-world grace,
Then lifted his eyes to my sun-tanned face:
"So you are the Mortal who drank from our rill,
A cordial welcome to Bilberry Hill!"
He peered again, and he watched mine eyes,
Then turning, he whistled the lapwing's note.
For a moment the melody seemed to float
O'er the heather; and then with increased surprise
                I saw a troop
Of little green men around me group.
        They all bowed low, "I thought you had fled
        The Yorkshire Uplands, green men!" I said.

They smiled at each other. Their leader broke
The hush of the heather, and thus he spoke:
"Ling-men! her eyes are the eyes of the fells,
Grey as the clouds and blue as the bells
Of the harebell. See! how they flash and play
As the rivulet does 'neath the rowan and birk;
'Tis a glance in which there's loving a-lurk;
A glance that only is born on the brae.
                Ling-men! I am sure
A changeling is she, and belongs to the moor.
        Her way she lost as a weeny bairn.
        Men found her, and town-ways they made her learn.
Capture her heart so she cannot roam
Far away from her grouse-loved home,
Weave from the cottony grasses a chain
That will pull at her heart with a wild, dear pain;
Fashion a gyve from the wings of the lark,
Manacles make from the bumble-bees' croon,
To keep her a captive from June to June,
To render her ours in the light, in the dark!"

                They wove a spell
Which encircled me round from fell to fell.
        O! it bound my heart for ever and aye,
        To the lands where the Bilberry Ling-men play.

DALLOWGILL MOOR.

MY HERBARY

I know a little garden very old,
    High-walled, with wandering paths of greenest box;
Beyond the doorway lies the rolling wold,
    The open moorland, and the Brimham Rocks.

Here find a home all nigh-forgotten herbs;
    The sage and rosemary nod side by side;
A giant lavender no pruning curbs,
    With us each year the honesties abide.

Under a hawthorn, ruby-gemmed in May,
    A bank of marjorams lie at their ease;
Here, lad's-love sigh their fragrant hearts away,
    Whilst rippling lieds of water never cease.

Beside the cherry-tree the balsams flower,
    The rue and mint bloom out a life-time meek;
A pleasant place it is at sunrise hour,
    When sportful finches wing in hide-and-seek.

And where the aged, moss-grown sundial lies,
    The peacock pert unfolds his wheel-rim tail,
Showing a hundred jewelled Argus eyes:
    With harsh, shrill cry he bids the day "All hail."