West Country Poets

KNIGHT, Thomas H. (b.1863) 300-302

This young writer may be classed as one of the minor living Cornish poets.  He was born at Lostwithiel in 1863, and educated at the Grammar School in that town up to 1877, since which time he has been engaged in clerical work.  He is now an officer in Her Majesty's Customs at Goole in Yorkshire.  Between the years 1881 and 1886 many of Mr. Knight's pieces appeared in Young England (in connection with which paper he has won twelve prizes and twenty certificates), the Weekly Dispatch, Cornish Times, West Briton, West of England Magazine, Church in the West, etc.  His pieces have not been collected, and the following are from MS. copies furnished by Mr. Knight himself.
 

A BALLAD OF DEVON

My song is of Devon, the cradle of free men,
 The shire of the meadow, the mountain, the moor,
The home of that race of invincible seamen
 That harried the Spaniard on Mexico's shore

[. . . . more verses in the same vein follow on pp.301-301.]

Transcribed by Sandra Windeatt from: Wright, W. H. K.,(1896) West-Country Poets: Their Lives and Works. London: Elliot Stock, pp.48-51