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Thu, 4:00AM
light rain
9.8°C
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light rain
9.8°C
SW 23mph
 | Sunrise | 5:07AM |
| Sunset | 7:13PM |  |
Steve Whitaker
Features Writer
@stevewhitaker1.bsky.social
P.ublished 11th April 2026
arts
Poem Of The Week: Pennines In April By Ted Hughes (1930-1998)
Pennines in April
If this county were a sea (that is solid rock
Deeper than any sea) these hills heaving
Out of the east, mass behind mass, at this height
Hoisting heather and stones to the sky
Must burst upwards and topple into Lancashire.
Perhaps, as the earth turns, such ground-stresses
Do come rolling westward through the locked land.
Now, measuring the miles of silence
Your eye takes the strain: through
Landscapes gliding blue as water
Those barrellings of strength are heaving slowly and heave
To your feet and surf upwards
In a still, fiery air, hauling the imagination,
Carrying the larks upward.
If this county were a sea (that is solid rock
Deeper than any sea) these hills heaving
Out of the east, mass behind mass, at this height
Hoisting heather and stones to the sky
Must burst upwards and topple into Lancashire.
Perhaps, as the earth turns, such ground-stresses
Do come rolling westward through the locked land.
Now, measuring the miles of silence
Your eye takes the strain: through
Landscapes gliding blue as water
Those barrellings of strength are heaving slowly and heave
To your feet and surf upwards
In a still, fiery air, hauling the imagination,
Carrying the larks upward.
Image by xiSerge from Pixabay
Slowing the poem's measured metre to a pace that crawls just beyond aeonic inertia, Hughes' onomatopoeias strain to suggest a movement that is both silent and inexorable: the repeated verb 'heaving' actuates the surface's visible manifestations, hoisting the heather, uplifting the larks, and finally forcing a connection with the human observer in the incendiary maelstrom of the imagination.