Crow Hill
The farms are oozing craters in Sheer sides under the sodden moors: When it is not wind it is rain, Neither of which will stop at doors: One will damp beds and the other shake Dreams beneath sleep it cannot break. Between the weather and the rock Farmers make a little heat; Cows that sway a bony back, Pigs upon delicate feet Hold off the sky, trample the strength That shall level these hills at length. Buttoned from the blowing mist Walk the ridges of ruined stone. What humbles these hills has raised The arrogance of blood and bone, And thrown the hawk upon the wind, And lit the fox in the dripping ground.
Crow Hill - form Summary
Three Stanzas Against Erosion
The poem is built from three six-line stanzas whose tight, near-regular rhymes impose order on a landscape defined by relentless wind, rain, and erosion. Each stanza shifts focus: damaged farms, the farmers' precarious resistance, and the hardiness of walkers and animals. This progression makes human and animal life seem shaped by the same forces that threaten to wear the hills away.
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