lines written upon urra moor

​Old God was too much with us. Quietly
we wander through the moss-knolled, sodden peat
upon the trackless and the sun-blazed lea,
the heather blooming vernal at our feet.

Here pagan-wild grows the mood of yore
on barrow-hills replete with bones of men
who knew dead gods not gone from ceaseless moors,
from England’s cold and rain-begotten fens,

who knew, as now we do, how nature quells
the death-sick share of souls with cotton-grass
and bluebells blushing bright in twilit dells.
By age-undying steles, stones we pass,

our roaming feet astray in heathered clod,
beneath the blinded glance of vanquished God.

 

© 2017 Christie Florit

Photo Source
Alan Southworth