The hills once stood in their emerald robes, where daffodils laughed in the breeze,
The fells rolled down to the mirrored lakes, and time moved as slow as it pleased.
The walls of stone, by old hands laid, embraced the land like a prayer,
A covenant signed in the hush of the dawn, with beauty too perfect to bear.
From valleys deep and mist-cloaked heights, where poets once wandered alone,
To gaze on the sky’s own painted hand, where nature had carved her throne,
The bells of the church in the distant glen would toll in a melody bright,
But now there echoes another sound, five calls in the day and the night.
The shepherd who stood with his Herdwick flock now watches the valley below,
Where towers arise with their crescent crowns, and voices command where to go.
The muezzin’s cry sweeps over the fells, where thrush and cuckoo would sing,
And silence is scattered like petals in storm, beneath the new order they bring.
Why build a shrine where the orchids bloom, where Wordsworth once wandered in verse?
Is it the hills they wish to climb, or the land itself they would nurse?
A claim is laid, unseen at first, like roots in the riverbank deep,
And those who question, who whisper their doubts, are told it is best not to weep.
But beauty, once sullied, is hard to regain, a wound on the earth and the sky,
And silence, once shattered, will never return, though the hills may still rise up high.
For what is the worth of a landscape divine, when its soul is no longer its own?
When the land is reshaped, not by wind or by wave, but by hands that demand and enthrone?
O shepherd, O painter, O poet of old, your echoes are fading away,
The lake still glistens, the heather still blooms, yet something has gone astray.
For beauty is more than the sweep of a hill, or the gold of the daffodil's dance,
It is peace, it is time, it is silence held dear, now lost in a conquering glance.
(By John Shenton)