This poem was quoted by GUEST,symon on 09 Aug 2008:

From West-Country Verses by Arthur Leslie Salmon (Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood and Sons, 1908), page 10.


WIDDECOMBE ON THE MOOR.

The devil came to Widdecombe
With thunder and with flame;
He left behind at Widdecombe
A terror and a name;
And this, the moorland voices tell,
Is how the devil came.

The autumn flashed with red and gold
Along the Devon lanes;
The tangled hedges of the wold
Were rich with mellow stains,—
The torrents of the moorland old
Were turbulent with rains.

There came a stranger to the inn
And sought to know his way—
To Poundstock on the moor he came
In sombre black array;
He asked the road to Widdecombe—
It was the Sabbath-day.

He shouted loudly for a drink—
His sable steed he stroked;
And when he tossed the liquor down,
It boiled and hissed and smoked;
Like water on a red-hot iron
The hissing liquor soaked.

"Good woman, will you be my guide
To Widdecombe on the moor?"
With trembling accent she declined—
She said the road was sure.
She saw a cloven hoof strike out
As he spurred away from the door.

Low on the massy cleaves and tors
A boding trouble lay—
A ceaseless murmur of the streams
Came through the silent day.
The stranger rode to Widdecombe,—
Full well he found the way.

The folk were gathered in the church
To hear the evening pray'r,
And if 'twas dark enough without,
'Twas threefold darker there;
And on the gathered people fell
A shudder and a scare.

Now is the time, oh kneeling folk,
To pray with fervent fear,
For the enemy of the soul of man,
Devouring fiend, is near,
And evil thoughts and base desires
Unbind his fetters here.

Sudden upon the moorland kirk
The crash of thunder broke—
A noise as of a thousand guns,
With many a lightning-stroke,—
A blackness as of blackest night,
With fitful fire and smoke.

It seemed the Day of doom had come;
The roof was torn and rent,
And through the church from end to end
A fearful flame-ball went.
It seemed the dreadful Day had come
In wild bewilderment.

The stranger came to Widdecombe—
He tied his horse without;
He rushed into the crashing door
With fiendish laugh and shout;
Through the door the fiery stranger came,
Through the shattered roof went out.

Men prayed with terror and remorse—
In frenzied fear they cried;
And one lay dead with cloven head,
His blood besprinkled wide—
And one was struck so dire a stroke
That of his hurt he died.

Down through the roof the turret came—
The spire was twisted stark.
A beam came crushing down between
The parson and the clerk,—
And fearful was the sudden light,
And fearful was the dark.

Then fell a deep and deathlike hush;
And through the silence dead,
"Good neighbours, shall we venture out?"
A trembling farmer said—
"I' the name o' God, shall we venture out?”—
For the fearsome time seemed sped.

Then up and spake the minister
With white yet dauntless face:
"Tis best to make an end of prayer,
Trusting to Christ His grace;
For it were better to die here
Than in another place."

So in the kirk at Widdecombe
They finished evening pray'r;
And then at last they ventured out
Into the autumn air.
Brightly the jagged moorland lay
In sundown calm and fair.

The devil came to Widdecombe
With thunder and with flame,—
He left behind a shattered kirk,
A terror, and a fame;
And this, the moorland voices tell,
Is how the devil came.