Poem by James Payn

Heartholm

ONCE more upon this happy hill
Doth yet my free foot bound at will;
About those cliffs, whose hearts of stone
To spade and mattock inly groan,
Well to reward the miner’s pains,
In wealth from out a thousand veins,
Poor and past use, in age resigned
To ruin like our human kind,
And now and then o’erwhelming all,
Midst sullen thunder, in their fall;
Above the moorlands, brown and shorn,
On whose rough beds the winds are born,
From hardy north-blast, flinging wreaths
Of cradled snow, to that which breathes
Too infant-like to bear its tale
Of heathery sweetness to the vale;
And through those woods, my boyhood knew
And loved so well, whose memories strew
Their pathways thick as leaves
Upon the dreary autumn eves:
Once more I tread these pleasant fields
With chainless heart, fair Devon yields
Once more the old accustomed rest,
Most welcome as most absent guest.

1. Grisedale Beck
2. The Backs
3. Inverary
4. Lake-Land
5. Grasmere

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