Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, PEAT CUTTING, by WILLIAM RENTON


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

PEAT CUTTING, by                    
First Line: There are no shadows on this shaggy moor
Last Line: As through a lung communion with their kind.


There are no shadows on this shaggy moor,
But breaks darker than shadow where the peat
Glooms unresisting from the level heath.
For while no rampart rises from the plain,
Dark fosses show; and slenderer crannies lurk,
Refrains of these dark steeps, and give the tone
To those dusk patches and the heather brown.
Blue-shirted in the midst one delver toils,
Or seems to toil, with that uncertain port
The toiler feigns luxuriously to wear
To one who watches in repose from far.
Women white-hooded trundle to and fro,
One coming and one going, soundless barrows,
Now empty and now laden with the clods
Yon delver seems to cut or seems to lift
Athwart the bank; and stow the sodden peats
In rank, beside the ranks of peats abake
That stand like bricks upon a brickfield ranged.
A cart hard by the road-way stretches prone:
And points to where his yokefellow afar --
So far he seems a part of yon far fell --
Grazes at will -- the solitary bond
Between the silent toilers moving there
And all the busy life unheard below.
Nor he through them but they through him may breathe
As through a lung communion with their kind.





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