On A Yorkshire Moor

Over a hill the west wind loves,
There lies a quiet glen,
Far away from the roaring world,
Far from the strife of men ;
Out to the south a lordly wall
Reared by no human hands,
A cloud-dark wall that overlooks
The windy heather lands.

Crags to the north like fortress bold,
A proud arrogant steep,
That shelters from the raiding storms
The winter-harassed sheep ;
Out to the east a rising fell,
Striped like a tiger’s skin,
With raking flank of yellow grass,
And ribs of darksome whin.

And one grey rock, like pagan god,
Solemn as death, and lone,
That oft, maybe, the hill tribes made
Their ancient worship stone ;
The strange wild people of the past
Have vanished race on race,
And we, like shadows on the grass,
Now pass before its face.

And one clear stream ordained to be
The singer of the heath,
A fairy rising with her songs
From mystic wells beneath ;
The silver mist on wet May moors,
The wild autumnal rain,
That gave their music to the hill,
The stream gives back again.

A singer, that from ancient days
Hath charmed this purple height,
Still singing through the bracken green,
A chorister in white ;
And I poor singer, doomed to seek
My songs with weary thought,
Can never like this streamlet feel
The songs that rise unsought.

O’er pebbles, laid like Eastern floor,
With tiles of every hue,
A jewelled houri flashing down
Long corridors of blue,
And roaming seaward takes the wave,
A gift from moorland wells,
North Sea hath its grandeur from
The rugged Yorkshire fells.

And here there comes on driving wings,
Red-singed by autumn fires,
The Moorcock, lordliest bird that loves
The lusty northern shires ;
And here a falcon strikes across
The lark-hushed spaces high,
A moment-poised, then comes to earth,
A dagger from the sky.

And where the wind-song shakes the grass,
And all the hollow fills,
I lie and hold communion with
The spirit of the hills ;
And nought of greed of petty strife,
Or human fret is here,
But one great feeling sways the heart, –
To worship and revere.

A temple built by nature’s hands,
With transept, nave and aisle,
And hallowed by the holiness
Of some cathedral pile ;
A minster where Eternal rites
And harmonies abound,
The sky above, the moor below,
And the great God around.

Ammon Wrigley (1861-1946) Songs of a Moorland Parish, 1912.

(With thanks to Andy Hemingway, the only photographer I have seen who consistently captures the spirit of the northern moors, for making some of Wrigley’s work available online.)