The Warren House Inn stands with heels in the rock

winds a - weeping round its roofs

or capes of mist creeping round its solitary back

Its doors always shut for the heat shut in

with regard for the fire never quenched

and above

 

the boards as you look up

to where the tinners often wenched

the stench of labour on them

 

strange lights would play on the rotten mires

to lure the unwary in playful deceit

but on a summer's day the peewits called

and butterflies in pranking conceit

 

the tinners drew their ancient spoil

their tribute for the scales of Tavistock

beaten down by wind and rain

under pain of profit and gain.

 

And all the while The Warren House Inn

would provide the wreaths of alcohol

and brains would spill with lavish laughter

when spirits were high with the toothless grin

 

seams were hacked at the Golden Dagger,

heaps left scabby by the running rills,

and the echoes of sweat rang out by day

at the ever pressing mills

 

but now those deaths have long passed,

all but a scare and a ghost

we see, as the wind ignores the hiving sores

of labour's toil,  lets loose instead

its fingers on the rowan tree

as it leans towards the moor's infinity.