Explore "Songs of Angus: BACK TO THE LAND" by Violet Jacob on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Out in the upland places, / I see both dale and down, / And the ploughed earth with open scores / Turning the green to brown.
The bare bones of the country / Lie gaunt in winter days, / Grim fastnesses of rock and scaur, / Sure, while the year decays.
And, as the autumn withers, / And the winds strip the tree, / The companies of buried folk / Rise up and speak with me; --
From homesteads long forgotten, / From graves by church and yew, / They come to walk with noiseless tread / Upon the land they knew; --
Men who have tilled the pasture / The writhen thorn beside, / Women within grey vanished walls / Who bore and loved and died.
And when the great town closes / Upon me like a sea, / Daylong, above its weary din, / I hear them call to me.
Dead folk, the roofs are round me, / To bar out field and hill, / And yet I hear you on the wind / Calling and calling still;
And while, by street and pavement, / The day runs slowly through, / My soul, across these haunted downs, / Goes forth and walks with you.