Hill Born

On Remembrance Day, I thought it would be appropriate to share another of the poems by the Hexham-born poet, Wilfrid Wilson Gibson, this time entitled Hill Born.

The poem is from Gibson's First World War collection Battle. Due to his ill health, the army would not accept him for service abroad and he spent some months as an Army clerk in England. His poems in Battle are written from a soldier's point of view, portraying the horrors of war and the terrible effects on the young men who went to fight in the trenches.

In Hill Born, the thoughts of a Northumberland man fighting in France turn to happier times spent in the Cheviot Hills ...

I sometimes wonder if it’s really true
I ever new
Another life
Than this unending strife
With unseen enemies in lowland mud,
And wonder if my blood
Thrilled ever to the tune
Of clean winds blowing through an April noon
Mile after sunny mile
In the green ridges of Windy Gile
Today, our thoughts turn to those who went to war and had no homecoming to the green ridges of their native hills.

Windy Gyle, on the Cheviot Ridge, from Shillhope Law