The Wainstones, Broughton Bank

The Wainstones, Broughton Bank

I

From early youth, to more than three-score years,
I’ve loved to climb the mountain on which stand
The rugged WAINSTONES; or on every hand
Are scenes of beauty; Cleveland thence appears
Like one huge garden. How the prospect cheers 5
One’s sinking spirits, drives of worldly care,
And makes us feel that we can nobly dare
Do all the things Duty needs;—for foolish fears
Affright not minds alive to Nature’s charms.
Church, cottage, farmstead, mansion, village, town, 10
Are finely intermix’d as we look down;
O’er all, the distant ocean. My heart warms
When looking on the landscape: and to me
The WAINSTONES seem to say—Stand firm for Liberty.

II
And aye these giant crags, with lichens gray, 15
To me are beautiful! and I look back
On bygone years, when I did little lack
The spring of youth to sport the livelong day
From crag to crag, as sportive as a fawn.
And friends now resting in their peaceful graves, 20
And others parted from me by the waves
Of yonder sea, no longer from me torn,
Seem once again to roam the hills with me,—
Proud of the purple heather to adorn
Our hats as plumes,—whilst from the neighb’ring corn 25
We pluck’d its fine Blue Bottle;* days when we
Were blithe as the sweet birds that round us sung;
For we were healthy, innocent, and young.

George Markham Tweddell

*The Centaurea cyanus, or Corn Blue Bottle, truly termed by
BURGESS, “one of the handsomest of our wildflowers.”—
Indeed, many our garden flowers are much inferior to it in
beauty. The cornfields, I may inform those of my readers as
unacquainted with the district, reach to the foot of the
Cleveland Hills.