The Roots of the Mountains, page 1 by William Morris
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N OF BURGDALE THEIR FRIENDS THEIR NEIGHBOURS THEIR FOEMEN AND THEIR FELLOWS IN ARMS BY WILLIAM MORRIS
Whiles carried o'er the iron road, We hurry by some fair abode; The garden bright amidst the hay, The yellow wain upon the way, The dining men, the wind that sweeps Light locks from off the sun-sweet heaps - The gable grey, the hoary roof, Here now--and now so far aloof. How sorely then we long to stay And midst its sweetness wear the day, And 'neath its changing shadows sit, And feel ourselves a part of it. Such rest, such stay, I strove to win With these same leaves that lie herein.
CHAPTER I.
OF BURGSTEAD AND ITS FOLK AND ITS NEIGHBOURS
Once upon a time amidst the mountains and hills and falling streams of a fair land there was a town or thorp in a certain valley. This was well-nigh encompassed by a wall of sheer cliffs; toward the East and the great mountains they drew together till they went near to meet, and left but a narrow path on either side of a stony stream that came rattling down into the Dale: toward the river at that end the hills lowered somewhat, though they still ended in sheer rocks; but up from it, and more especially on the north side, they swelled into great shoulders of land, then dipped a little, and rose again into the sides of huge fells clad with pine-woods, and cleft here and there by deep ghylls: thence again they rose higher and steeper, and ever higher till they drew dark and naked out of the woods to meet the snow-fields and ice-rivers of the high mountains. But that was far away from the pass by the little river into the valley; and the said river was no drain from the snow-fields white and thick with the grinding of the ice, but clear and bright were its waters that came from wells amidst the bare rocky heaths.
The upper end of the valley, where it first began to open out from the pass, was rugged and broken by rocks and ridges of water-borne stones, but presently it smoothed it