The friendship of a hill I know
Above the rising down,
Where the balmy souther breezes blow
But a mile or two from town;
The budded broom and heather
Are wedded on its breast,
And I love to wander thither
When the sun is in the west.
O thou bonny high hill!
I covet no other;
Our secrets we tell,
For we love one another.
Long ere the trailing shadows stalk
In the early morning hour,
Our childish tongues begin to wallk
Above the high hill-tower;
Ere the woodman leaves his shelter,
Or the shepherd seeks his fold,
While the wooly conies skelter
Along the coltsfoot gold.
O thou bonny high hill!
I covet no other;
Our secrets we tell,
For we love one another.
High over all the meadow-parks
Thy taper crest aspires,
And a thousand subtle-singing larks
Have roused thee with desires;
Where thy sloping left arm reaches
To acquaint the growing morn
A score of plumy beeches
Thy yellow locks adorn.
O thou bonny high hill!
I covet no other;
Our secrets we tell,
For we love one another.
Here where the tyrant of the sky
Smokes slant athwart the stream
Beneath thy gathered locks I lie
In the hollow depths of dream;
The green leaves clap together
With the music of the seas
And about the bloomy heather
Hums the college of the bees.
O thou bonny high hill!
I covet no other;
Our secrets we tell,
For we love one another.
No other monument hast thou
To point the hills around,
But the crescent scar upon thy brow
Of the bloody battle mound;
The ploughman spares the furrow
For the yielding meadow-zones,
While the timid conies burrow
Among thy ribbed bones.
O thou bonny high hill!
I covet no other;
Our secrets we tell,
For we love one another.
No rushing torrent thunders down
Like an arrow in its flight,
Or piny forest clothes thy crown
And intercepts thy sight;
But a hundred squares and hollows
Close-gathered round thy feet,
With clovers and with fallows,
And the golden-bearded wheat.
O thou bonny high hill!
I covet no other;
Our secrets we tell,
For we love one another.
A thousand years will come and go,
And thousands more will rise,
My buried bones to dust will grow,
And dust defile my eyes;
But when the lark sings o'er the wold
And the swallow weaves her nest,
My soul will take the coltsfoot gold
And blossom in thy breast.
O thou bonny high hill!
I covet no other;
Our secrets we tell,
For we love one another.
Liddington is a bronze age hill fort.