Alone at the shut of the day was I,
With a star or two in a frost clear sky,
And the byre smell in the air.
I'd tramped the length and breadth o' the fen;
But never a farmer wanted men;
Naught doing anywhere.
A great calm moon rose back o' the mill,
And I told myself it was God's will
Who went hungry and who went fed.
I tried to whistle; I tried to be brave;
But the new ploughed fields smelt dank as the grave;
And I wished I were dead.
NOTE: In the anthology "Poems That Make Men Cry", the polymath and entrepreneur Felix Dennis recounts how he came across this poem when he bought the library of J B Priestley.