The Copy Book

Northumberland by Wilfrid Wilson Gibson A poem of nostalgia for the sea breezes and yellow gorse of Northumberland.

1918

Queen Victoria 1837-1901 to King George VI 1936-1952

Music: George Butterworth

About this picture …

Gorse (whin) beside the beach at Scremerston in Northumberland, just south of Berwick-upon-Tweed. Only a few yards off to the left lies the East Coast mainline.

Northumberland

War-poet Wilfrid Gibson never served abroad, and was in fact accepted for the army only at his fifth application, in 1917. These short verses do not come from his war-themed collections (though many reflect that subject) but from a set remembering Northumberland, the county of his birth in Hexham.

by Wilfrid Wilson Gibson 1878-1962

HEATHERLAND and bentland,*
Black land and white,
God bring me to Northumberland,
The land of my delight.

Land of singing waters,
And words from off the sea,
God bring me to Northumberland,
The land where I would be.

Heatherland and bentland,
And valley rich with corn,
God bring me to Northumberland,
The land where I was born.

Bent-grass (Agrostis) is a very common kind of stiff, coarse grass. Bentland is an area of bent-grass, or simply a term for heathland in general.

Précis

Wilfrd Gibson writes nostalgically of Northumberland, the county in which he was born, and wishing he might return there. His memories are of the countryside, the broad moorland and the fields, and also of the coast, implying that it was overlooking the sea that his verses often came to him. (50 / 60 words)

Source

From ‘Whin’, by Wilfrid Wilson Gibson (1878-1962). Thanks to Northumberland Cottage for the reference.

Suggested Music

Two English Idylls No. 2

George Butterworth (1885-1916)

Performed by English String Orchestra, conducted by William Boughton.

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