An April night a cloudy sky
A gusty wind that hurried by
The windmill set upon a hill
Stood motionless and stern and still
The wind had ever been it’s friend
Had been the motive power to send
It’s great arms swinging round so fast
It’s very life was in the blast
But now the windmill’s life was o’er—-
The giant sails revolved no more
Standing upon that hilltop bare
It seemed a winged watch there
To guard the living and the dead
At rest below in Nettlebed
For ninety years the mill had stood
Thro’ evil days and of good.
Steadfast alike, thro’ storm and rain
Thro’ human joy and human pain
Unchanging-mid the toil and strife
And changes of this mortal life
While man ,how short his time appears
How seldom man lives ninety years
Sudden from out the dusky night
Arose a strange bewildering sight
A lurid flame was seen to glide
Snakelikealong the steep hillside
From tuft to tuft of gorse it spread
Shooting aloft and mounting higher
Until the cry was Fire! Fire!
In haste men climbed the grassy slope
But vain their labour, vain their hope
The roaring flames that crowned the brow
Were wrapped around their windmill now
Flames carried by the wind, it’s friend
Were destined thus to be it’s end
And miles away the torch was seen
that flared upon that upland green
And miles away men looked and said
The windmill burns at Nettlebed
Alas this time the raging fire
Became our windmill’s funeral pyre
G.E.Spencer (an old Nettlebedite)