UNQUIET SLUMBERS

“I lingered round them, under that benign sky; watched the moths fluttering among the heath and hare-bells; listened to the soft wind breathing through the grass; and wondered how anyone could ever imagine unquiet slumbers for the sleepers in that quiet earth.”

Under an ambivalent sun that knows neither grief nor passion, the moor exhales over slate and stone. Heather and moss whisper against cold earth, entwined in creeping ivy; a soft lament, an uneasy stirring of agonized longing.

1924 illustration by Percy Tarrant, courtesy of the British Library