On the Wild Hill - a poem by Mary Webb

I love this poem. Although written of a Shropshire hill, it could be a picture of the New Forest hills and moors in early summer.


On the Wild Hill

Would God I were there, on the wild hill
Where the ponies with wet fetlocks wade in morasses
Starred with yellow mimulus, drinking the chill
Brown water! Where the bright foals, black and bay,
Run to their dams through the dark blue day,
As the shadow of a hawk passes.

If I might be there in the grave dawn,
Stumbling on a curlew`s nest beneath its spread
Of flowering heather, and seeing across the lawn,
Sheep-mown, the creamy, pencilled curlew chickens run,
Quick and bright as water in the sun,
Hiding in a fresh green bracken-bed!

If only I might watch the old curlews drifting
Down the silver summer air like tawny leaves!
Hear their icy, elfin voices uplifting
The warm rich veils of silence and content,
Discovering some chill presentiment,
Like a fugitive soul that grieves.

Mary Webb




Hill track by silver birches


New Forest ponies camouflaged amongst bracken on the hill.


"Old Snowy"


I found "On the Wild Hill" recently, in my aunt`s old book "Fifty One Poems" (Pub:Jonathan Cape,1946), an anthology of poetry by Mary Webb which was unpublished during her lifetime.

Mary Webb (1881-1927), was a native of Shropshire and her poetry and prose are deeply influenced by the natural beauty of her native county. I first discovered Mary Webb by reading her novels "Precious Bane" and "Gone to Earth" which were republished by Virago in the 1970s. Before my elderly aunt died this spring, I discovered that the work of Mary Webb had been the subject of her college dissertation in the 1930s. We both shared a love of Mary Webb`s sensitive observations of nature, her sense of place and her fine use of language.