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Page 9 |
Newsletter 97, Summer 2012 © Hampshire Mills Group |
Keepsake Mill by Robert Louis Stevenson.
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Over the borders, a sin without pardon,
Breaking the branches and crawling below,
Out through the breach in the wall of the
garden,
Down by the banks of the river, we go.
Here is the mill with the humming of
thunder,
Here is the way with the wonder of foam,
Here is the sluice with the race running
under-
Marvellous places, though handy to home! |
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Sounds of the village grows stiller and
stiller
Stiller the note of the birds on the
hill;
Dusty and dim are the eyes of the Miller,
Deaf are his ears with the moil of the mill.
Years may go by, and the wheel in the river,
Wheel as it wheels for us, children, today,
Wheel and keep roaring and foaming for ever
Long after all of the boys are away. |
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Home from the Indies, and home from the
ocean,
Heroes and soldiers we all shall come home;
Still we shall find the old mill wheel in
motion,
Turning and churning that river to foam.
You with the bean that I gave when we
quarrelled,
I with your marble of Saturday last,
Honoured and old and all gaily apparelled,
Here we shall meet and remember the past. |
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All photographs taken at Bere Mill, National
Mills Weekend, 12th May, 2012
where John Silman, John Christmas and Basil
Hunt remember times past and ponder the
future. |
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