The Unyielding Bernician Moorlands

Henry Percy, 1st Earl of Northumberland,
looked out across the Cheviots —
bleak, barren country running on into Scotland.

He had done as the Prince-Bishop asked
and raised a small church at Cornhill-on-Tweed.

It was not a fine church.

Were dimension a necessary criterion for the ecclesiastic designation,
it might not have qualified as a church at all.

The Duke of Lancaster had suggested watering it;
Percy doubted anything would grow on ground so poor.

The Northern Marches were so inhospitable to crop and kine,
King Robert II often wondered aloud why his reivers even bothered.