Windypost Verse

THE WINDY POST.

Lonely there, betwixt moor and sky,

Where great grey clouds go drifting by,

And the peewit utters her plaintive cry,

The windy post stands silently.

A little old cross on the windy heather,

Roughly hewn out of granite gray,

Fretted and worn by the wind and the weather,

Carved by the monks of a bygone day,

There on the hill where at sunset and dawning

They paused as they travelled the Abbot’s Way.

Oh, was it for hope that the monks were praying?

The hope of the gay little leat;

That through the gorse and heather was straying,

Singing and sparkling there at their feet;

Drowning their sighs and their cares in its waters,

As joyful it flowed the great river to meet.

Or was it for Faith that the monks were sighing,

There on the wind swept Abbot’s Way?

The faith of the patient hills that were lying

Silent and still ‘neath their boulders gray;

Those ancient hills where the sunshine and shadow

Down through the ages have ceased not to stray.

Or, little grey cross on the windy heather,

Was it for Love that the monks did cry?

The love of the Tors and the wind and the weather,

The love of the infinite sky

That the moorland lays at the feet of the Master

At sunset and dawn when He passes by.

V. L. Phillips, 1923.