The Clough Among The Hills Poem by Cicely Fox Smith

I know a clough where nightly
My spirit goes in dream,
Where wind-bent trees grow scantly
Beside a brawling stream,
And there, by gorse and heather,
Grey moorland and grey stone,
The ghost of the years forsaken
Walks in the hills alone.

There in the shy North springtime
Our first late cuckoo calls,
And last on yellowing leafage
The touch of Autumn falls.
There first the budding willows
Break forth in golden pride,
And the snow lies there the longest
In all the countryside.

The upland winds there wander:
The brown moor broods above
Like a stern-seeming mother
Whose heart is filled with love:
And more than banks and moorlands
A hundred times more fair
I love its few late flowerets
And treetops, early bare.

For through yon scattered planting,
Beside yon hurrying stream,
All times and tides forgetting,
My spirit walks in dream,
Where the quiet dough unchanging
With sun or shadow fills,
And the soul o' the past dwells lonely
In the silence of the hills.