Dorothy Una Ratcliffe

The Song of Nidderdale

As I came past the Brimham Rocks
    I heard the thrushes calling,
And saw the pleasant, winding Nidd
    In peaty ripples falling.
Its banks were gay with witching flowers,
    And all the folk did hail
Me back again so cheerily
    To bonnie Nidderdale.

The blackbirds in the birchen holts
    The live-long day were singing,
Where countless azure hyacinths
    Their perfumed bells were ringing.
And Guisecliff stands in loneliness
    Between the moor and vale,
Protecting with its rocky scaur
    My bonnie Nidderdale.

And as I passed thro' Pateley Brigg,
    A woman carolled blithely,
And up and down the cobbled streets
    The bairnies skipped so lithely.
The sky was blue, and silken clouds,
    Each like an elfin sail,
Swept o'er the waking larchen woods
    Of bonnie Nidderdale.

Where grey-stone dykes, and greyer garths
    Look down on Ramsgill village,
The thieving, gawmless, gay tomtits
    The little gardens pillage.
Grey Middlesmoor is perched upon
    The fellside azure pale,
A mist-girt, lonely sentinel
    O'er bonnie Nidderdale.

Above the dowly intake lands
    The great wide moor is calling,
Of heathered bens and brackened glens,
    Where peat-born rills are brawling.
O! land of ever-changing skies,
    Where wild winds storm and wail,
There is nowhere a land more loved
    Than bonnie Nidderdale.

NIDDERDALE.