As through the wild green hills of Wyre
The train ran, changing sky and shire,
And far behind, a fading crest,
Low in the forsaken west
Sank the high-reared head of Clee,
My hand lay empty on my knee. 
Aching on my knee it lay: 
That morning half a shire away
So many an honest fellow’s fist
Had well-nigh wrung it from the wrist. 
Hand, said I, since now we part
From fields and men we know by heart,
From strangers’ faces, strangers’ lands,-
Hand, you have held true fellows’ hands. 
Be clean then; rot before you do
A thing they’d not believe of you. 
You and I must keep from shame
In London streets the Shropshire name;
On banks of Thames they must not say
Severn breeds worse men than they;
And friends abroad must bear in mind
Friends at home they leave behind. 
Oh, I shall be stiff and cold
When I forget you, hearts of gold;
The land where I shall mind you not
Is the land where all’s forgot. 
And if my foot returns no more
To Teme nor Corve nor Severn shore,
Luck, my lads, be with you still
By falling stream and standing hill,
By chiming tower and whispering tree,
Men that made a man of me. 
About your work in town and farm
Still you’ll keep my head from harm,
Still you’ll help me, hands that gave
A grasp to friend me to the grave.

XXXVIII

The winds out of the west land blow,
 My friends have breathed them there;
Warm with the blood of lads I know
 Comes east the sighing air.

It fanned their temples, filled their lungs,
 Scattered their forelocks free;
My friends made words of it with tongues
 That talk no more to me.

Their voices, dying as they fly,
 Thick on the wind are sown;
The names of men blow soundless by,
 My fellows’ and my own.

Oh lads, at home I heard you plain,
 But here your speech is still,
And down the sighing wind in vain
 You hollo from the hill.

The wind and I, we both were there,
 But neither long abode;
Now through the friendless world we fare
 And sigh upon the road.

XXXIX

’Tis time, I think by Wenlock town
 The golden broom should blow;
The hawthorn sprinkled up and down
 Should charge the land with snow.

Spring will not wait the loiterer’s time
 Who keeps so long away;
So others wear the broom and climb
 The hedgerows heaped with may.

Oh tarnish late on Wenlock Edge,
 Gold that I never see;
Lie long, high snowdrifts in the hedge
 That will not shower on me.

XL

Into my heart an air that kills
 From yon far country blows: 
What are those blue remembered hills,
 What spires, what farms are those?