Disappointing Landmark

I went to see Hadrian's Wall, after many years of managing to never see it.  I think it was the trip to the Great Wall of China last year that prompted me to go and visit the heritage in my own back yard.  After driving for a couple of hours, we got to Housesteads Fort. I found it hard to disguise my disappointment. I'd expected to see the remnants of a substantial wall, but what's actually there suggests it was something much more modest.

Hadrian’s Wall

At last I could make it out

A narrow walkway

Rising from the grasping earth

Loose and crumbled stones

Tumbled from once good order

And straight alignment

Fallen randomly

Into the coarsest tussocks

Of grass and mossy ground 

Out here on the windswept moor

Miles from civilisation

Amongst ice and bitter cold

Lie lichen-covered blocks

In faint traceable patterns

Which snake and wind their way

Across the forbidding landscape 

Here long-abandoned evidence

Of ramparts, towers, turrets

Interrupts the regular line

And there a garrison fortress

Provided basic shelter

And some rough respite

Against adverse weather

And painted barbarians

Invading from the North 

But is this all there was?

So little sign these days

Of any forbidding Roman structure

But the merest thin grey line

Of no great height

Weaving through the frozen land

To be defended at all costs

By the toughest Legionnaires

At the very end of Empire

Copyright Andy Fawthrop 2012