Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE MILL, by RICHARD HARRY HART


Poetry Explorer

Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE MILL, by                    
First Line: The eyes of my upper windows
Last Line: Or stilled in the silence of centuries.
Subject(s): Mills & Millers


The eyes of my upper windows
Watch all that passes in Wye valley;
And the brook -- chattering little beast --
That splashes and paddles about my motonless wheel,
Tells me all that passes on Ash Hill:
Ay, and in all the land between there and the willows,
That droop like hypocritical old dames
And lose their decayed greenery into the water.

When there's a flood, and the brook gets brown like a savage --
Ay, and leaps and howls like a savage --
I creak in all my old timbers; and the farmers say:
"Th' old mill she be getting weak in her joints;
It would do nowt o' harm to have her down the now."
But I laugh, and only groan the more.
I'll outlive them and their children after.

So I am of the valley, and once the valley was mine.
I am as old as England herself, or at least what's written of her.
There was moss on my wheel and wear on my stones
Before the first monk set pen to paper.
I have seen England's people ground and sifted and the husks thrown away
As long as the grain has crunched between my stones:
Roman, Briton, Saxon, Norman, and the tempering of them,
Have sat while my wheel turned, and talked of many things.

I am old now, and useless, for we live in an age of invention;
But although the Wye people bring me their grain no longer,
At least I may lie in the warm spring sunlight,
Or the soft winter snows,
And watch the life of my valley.
I am of lasting build, as is England herself;
And although my gray stones may quiver with the blasts from the North Sea,
I stand until the last English voice is lost in the tongue of an alien race,
Or stilled in the silence of centuries.





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