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Joseph
Burgess. (1855—1954)
FAILSWORTH RE—VISITED.
First
published in the Oldham Express 12th Feb 1881.
The
supposed railway excursion obviously started from Hollinwood. Station, If they
had started from Failsworth Station, which didn’t open until 1881 anyway,
heading for Manchester, they wouldn’t have seen the sites mentioned in the text.
Joseph Burgess was born on the 3rd July 1855, in Old Lane (Old. Road)
Failsworth, at what was even then “an old house, ‘but is still (2003) standing,
numbered 64a Old Road, by Olive Street.
Come,
Sister, lay thy work aside,
The day
is warm and fine,
And we to
Manchester we will ride,
Along the
railway line;
Through
fields where once I gathered flowers,
And
sought the wild bird’s nest,
And which
are yet, like Eden’s bowers,
The
happiest and the best.
Ah~
fondly memory gilds the past,
Persevering for all time,
The
glamour life upon it cast
When
youth was in its prime;
And I
will show you as we pass
The
scenes of Auld Lang Sine,
When thou
wert but a babe, dear lass,
And I was
barely nine.
Those
houses, sloping to the brook,
Are on th’
Holebottom Broo;
In that
old cottage, in the nook,
I went to
a dame’s skoo’;
That
surged within my soul.
That
waste, where they are making bricks,
Once
waved with yellow grain;
Those
cottages, some five or six,
Are known
as “Th’ Turn o’th’ Lane,”
In that
end house we used to dwell,
And
there, dear, thou wast born;
And blest
be it for what befell
On that
December morn.
Now we
are skirting Wrigley Head’s Notorious village green;
And on
the right hand Moston spreads As far as can be seen;
I note
the farm’s low, whitewashed porch Where I mixed with the guests;
And, to
the left, the village church, Where brother Alec rests.
See, we
are crossing the canal’ And there is the old lock
And there
the wharf from which I fell,
When I
still wore a frock;
And there
the warehouse with its door Sheer to the water’s edge,
And the
dense traffic streaming o’er The famous Walmsley Bridge.
Oh!,
Nature, we may be divorced,
And in
the City set,
But where
thy currents once have coursed.
The heart
can ne’er forget;
Again I
live my childhood’s days,
My wildly
chel’ished. hopes;
And my
vain thoughts as blithly raise
As when I
trod these slopes.
Though
now on this embankment high
The
hoarse train snorts along,
Still I
hear the cuckoo’s cry,
The lark
and linnet’s song;
Still can
I see the corn and wheat
That once
abundant grew,
And in
the water at my feet
Heaven’s
mirrored dome of blue.
Pull up
the window, draw the blind,
The brief
review is o’er;
The train
is leaving far behind
The happy
scenes of yore;
But as
the message of the sea
Murmurs
within the shell,
Mem’ries
of Youth and Infancy
With ever
with me dwell. JB.
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