After Preston Fight

Twelve o' the clock! the nightmare hours
    Crawl through my brain like years;
All the hot sleepless night I hear
    The rain drip down like tears, —
Hoarse challenge flung from ward to ward,
    Dull tramp o' the sentry's feet,
And the dim, hungry, homeless hum
    Nightlong from the restless street.
Far-ah, how far from yon hive of sin
    The moorland winds are strong,
And streams from lone brown-bosomed hills
    Run down with a sound like song.
Far-ah, how far!— the healing air
    For which my torn heart fills, —
Under the cool dark of the sky
    The dusk rest of the hills.

Hills — O my hills that I love well!
    For which I hunger now
As for the face of an old friend,
    Or a kind touch on my brow.
I shall not walk where dreams o' my youth
    Like mists at morning cling;
I shall not hear my good hounds' cry
    Mate all the uplands ring;
I shall not look on the fields I know,
    The farms windy and grey, —
The little things that tug at my heart
    Such leagues—such lives away!
They say when a soul goes out to God
    Wide should the casements be,
Along its path to the lonely stars
    To set the loosed soul free:
And-so God keep me from my death
    Within these walls of stone —
Not all the powers of London town
    Shall hold me from mine own.

The sty which on Tower Hill looks down
    Looks on my hills also:
The winds which round this prison yearn
    Are those that hillmen know.
I will turn my face to mine own country,
    Mine eyes to my good North;
I will forget the shadow of death
    Or ever my breath goes forth.
I shall forget the block and the bonds
    And the fierce crowd looking on, —
Yea, as a pigeon hastes to its cote
    My soul will leap to be gone,
From the red axe and the bloody dust
    And the hot heart grown so cold,
And take its grief to the kind hills
    That are old as Earth is old, —
This grief that is like a brand on the brow
    And a hot wind through the brain, —
That has seared away the desire of tears
    And left a dry sick pain.

I am all too weary for hope, good Lord!
    It is all my tired heart's cry:
"Home, home — ah God! — to the North Country
    Where I were fain to die!"