- a Poem by WIlliam Hindson (1841-1920)
Dear uncle, joy attend your natal day
Accept this tribute which my heart would pay
I wish you health, and happiness and peace,
From every care. God grant you sweet release
May He whose love has guarded all your days
Still guide and keep you through life's devious ways
Although the Psalmist with inspired pen
Has bounded life by three score yeras and ten
Yet God in grace has given you seven beside
And still we hope, He'll let you long abide
To cheer us in this world of care and woe
From which we all must soon or later go
My fancy's flight now takes me cross the seas
To Mellguards, nestling neath o'er spreaded trees
Where long ago you played, an artless boy
And found on Patergill's banks unending joy
To that dear home you turned your wandering feet
In winter's cold and summer's fervent heat
Nut Syke, Cross Hill and Southwaite in those days
Were sacred to your merry games and plays
On Roughton Gill, o'er wooded banks you'd stray
And while away full many a summer's day
Till all the fields, and lanes, and plantings round
Became familiar and enchanted ground.
Soon came the time that you must go to school
And learn to master many a tedious rule
At Southwaite, bleak Broadfield, and Wreay fair
You bent your mind to study with due care
Till perseverance and a steadfast will
Conveyed you safe up Learning's rugged hill.
Methinks I see you crossing Roughton Gill
And then past Clemmy How ascend the hill
By Hackinbag, Howfield, and Intack wend
Then o'er the beck and up Gill Head ascend
Where in those days the gypsies oft were seen
Their tents erected on the wayside green
Next down the road past Swinesloe Lonning end
By Steppin's Dub your eager footsteps bend
High Wreay Lonning overarched with trees
In dear old Wreay now you spend the day
Till evening finds you on your homeward way.
Though many years since you those ways have trod
And schoolmates all may sleep beneath the sod
Yet memory oft brings up each lovely scene
And views the fields in never-changing green
In dreams you tread the well-known paths once more
And feel life's joyance as in days of yore.
The vale through which the winding Petterill flowed--
Dear lovely vale, your children's fair abode
Is bound to you by many sacred ties
At every turn a thousand memories rise
For, though in this fair land for years we roam
We still are exiles yearning for our home
How grandly rose the peak of Barrock Fell
O'er looking the river, brook and woodland dell
And fertile holms of never-fading green
With winding Petterill flowing fair between
While woods, and fields, and flowering hedgerows sweet
In wildest beauty and profusion meet !
Our dear loved home, around which mountains stand
Our picturesque old country, Cumberland
Dear land of river, lake and towering fell
In deepest memories thou shalt ever dwell
And though we tread thy smiling fields no more
We ave shall love thee as we did of yore.
