Wistmans Wood verse

Wistman’s Wood

There’s eeriness in Wistman’s Wood,
Where stealthy shadows slowly creep
About the boles of moaning trees.
There’s terror where the foaming stream
Streaks all the gorge with ghostly light,
And creaking willows toss their arms
Naked and lean against the flood.
There’s mourning on the bleak hillside,
And grief in sodden cotton grass
Black bogs, and peewits fluttering.
There’s mystery in great grim tors
All silent in the sobbing rain
Where in the shade of Windy Post
A whist hound’s baying to the moon.
And yet the wailing wind is dear-
A child, untamed, of that great clan
Of ling and gorse and granite grey.
One with the old eternal hills,
One with the tender moorland sky,
One with the ancient loneliness
Where peat fires burned and loved ones lie.
V. I . Phillips