Wiltshire Downs

The cuckoo's double note
Loosened like bubbles from a drowning throat
Floats through the air
In mockery of pipit, lark and stare.
The stable boys thud by
Their horses slinging divots at the sky
And with bright hooves
Printing the sodden turf with lucky grooves.
As still as a windhover
A shepherd in his napping coat leans over
His tall sheep-crook
And shearlings, tegs and yoes cons like a book.
And one tree-crowned long barrow
Stretched like a sow that has brought forth her farrow
Hides a king's bones
Lying like broken sticks among the stones.

Andrew Young (1885-1971)

The Long Stones Long Barrow at Beckhampton, Avebury

Silbury and the Age of Hills. Image credit Willow

This mound

This mound in some remote and dateless day
Rear'd o'er a Chieftain of the Age of Hills,
May here detain thee Traveller! from thy road
Not idly lingering. In his narrow house
Some Warrior sleeps below: his gallant deeds
Haply at many a solemn festival
The Bard has harp'd, but perish'd is the song
Of praise, as o'er these bleak and barren downs
The wind that passes and is heard no more.
Go Traveller on thy way, and contemplate
Glory's brief pageant, and remember then
That one good deed was never wrought in vain.

Robert Southey (1774–1843)

Under this wide Wiltshire sky. West Kennet Long Barrow. Image credit Willow

Prehistoric Burials

These barrows of the century-darkened dead,-
Memorials of oblivion, these turfed tombs
Of muttering ancestries whose fires, once red,
Now burn for me beyond mysterious glooms;
I pass them day by day while daylight fills
My sense of sight on these time-haunted hills.

Could I but watch those burials that began
Whole history - flint and bronze and iron beginnings,
When under this wide Wiltshire sky crude man
Warred with his world and augered our world-winnings!
Could I but enter that unholpen brain,
Cabined and comfortless and insecure,
That ruled some settlement on Salisbury Plain
And offered blood to blind primeval powers,-
Dim Caliban whose doom was to endure
Earth's ignorant nullity made strange with flowers.

Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967)

Carnac. The Alignment of Menec

Carnac. Centre du ciel et de la mer

Beaucoup d’hommes sont venus,
Sont restés. Terre d’ossements,
Poussière d’ossements.

Il y avait donc
L’appel de Carnac.

Comment chantaient-ils,
Ceux des menhirs?

Peut-être est-ce là
Qu’ils avaient moins peur.

Centre du ciel et de la mer,
De la terre aussi,
La lumière le dit.

Chantant, eux,
Pas loin de la mer,
Pour être admis par la lumière.

Regardant la mer,
Lui tournant le dos,
Implorant la terre.

Eugène Guillevic

Many men have come,
Have stayed. Land of bones,
Powdered bones.

Thus there was
the call of Carnac.

How did they sing,
The menhir-people?

Perhaps it was there
They knew less fear.

Centre of the sky and of the sea,
Of the land as well,
The light says it.

Singing, they were,
Not far from the sea,
To be let in by the light.

Beholding the sea,
Turning their back to it,
Imploring the land.

Eugène Guillevic. Translated by John Montague

Tara

What did you get for cleaning your hands?
A few broad beans and a word from an ass?
There was no sword on the road to Moab
And I can’t see your beanstalk, Jack.
Show me your broken heart.

gjrk

Silbury and West Kennet from East Kennet Long Barrow

East Kennet Long Barrow

Love me,
will you,
drape your arms around my chest.

Keep me warm
while I sleep,
dreaming of my children to the West.

Do not carve me out
with a desperate hand
or avaricious eye.

But if you must,
keep your voices down
so that I can hear their hearts are still beating.

© Copyright Persephone Vandegrift 2008

Its whispered gift

The Sacred Way

Stonehenge

Sacred, sacrosanct, sanctuary
In the ruins of what was sacred space that we need back:

These monoliths to moon and sun remind us
That we abandoned the stars to ourselves, only to find
That we have no rite for being human

But now as the breeze stirs, and we slow our steps
Where stone breathes we can receive its whispered gift again

Jay Ramsay

From his longer poem The Sacred Way

Secret as the thoughts of God

All sunlit was the earth I trod

All sunlit was the earth I trod,
The heavens were frankest blue;
But secret as the thoughts of God
The stones of Stanton Drew.

Sir William Watson (1858-1935)

Upon these eternal hills. Image credit Paul Atlas-Saunders

Written Within View of Castlerigg Stone Circle

I cannot believe
That in this fateful hour
The infinite beauty
That shall caress mine eyes
Behold!
I cannot believe, that the
Glorious fanfare of strange
Stark contrasts that my gaze
Is upon, so lifts me that
I become overwhelmed by passions
That I have never known.
I cannot believe that
The form of beauty
That the scene foretells
Can (alone) create such an impression
Upon my mind
That primeval memories stir
From depths uncharted territory.
So I am fired up by the glory of
The Holy Spirit
In Her pantheistic ways
Upon these eternal hills of mine.
I cannot believe that
Such variety of colour
And texture can engulf the
Ageless pattern strewn formations
Of fell side and mystic ring
And I cannot believe that Deity
Has not a hand in all of this and more
For surely all life's creation
Emanates from She who is
Sacred Earth's
Goddess Divine.

Alex Langstone

See also Alex Langstone's Spirit of Albion website here - http://www.alexlangstone.blogspot.com/

In dreams

Henge of stones and dreams of old

I am a fool.
From a distance
An ocean-span shall we say
I thought you were just stone sticks.

On my stomach
I floated
In dreams mind you
down the Avon
to prove my thoughts wrong.

I am jealous of you
I should like to wear a henge
as sophisticated as you do
that would make scholars wonder
and trowels pause in mid air.

And what was burned here?
What was burned?
And no lying
just how old are the ashes found?
No more fairy tales
and alignments
or spiritual ownership.

Come, come now,
these stone sticks
should be full of confessions
and of pride-pocked veins
that do not warrant such fertile
emotional destruction.

If I could grant you one thing
despite the limited power I possess
it would be the freedom
to escape back down the river
and the right to finally collapse
into your parents grieving arms.

© Copyright Persephone Vandegrift 2008

Fair fall on thee the morning light