To E. A. B.
When sad home-longings, like little waifs,
Come to my heart, in a stranger-land,
No thought of a house sweeps over me,
No pleasant thorp does my heart demand;
For the great blue open wold it cries,
For the road that over the moorland lies.
For heather lands where the plovers wing,
Where frail mists gather about the hills
Like mystic shapes that eerily cling,
Where the air is hushed for the snipe-loved rills:
All these my tired heart greets as "Home,"
When and wherever I'm forced to roam.
In the dales the pollarded willows flower:
I hear the wings of a mating thrush;
The river has gained its spated hour,
Its mad, magnificent, tumbling rush;
Ready to break their hearts or sing,
My own sweet dales are expecting spring.
No flower-girt cottage means home to me,
No stately, splendid ancestral pile,
No cosy house builded pleasantly
Does my wandering-weary heart beguile,
But the homesick heart of me longs to hail
My county of lovering moor and dale!
BEAMSLEY BEACON.