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| THERE is a hill o’erlooking Norridgewock | |
| Whose summit is a crown of mossy rock, | |
| Whereon the daylight lingers ere it dies, | |
| When the broad valley in the gloaming lies. | |
| Around you are the everlasting hills, | 5 |
| Whose presence all your soul with worship fills. | |
| The distant mountains, purple clad, are grouped | |
| Like monarchs, when the golden sun has stooped | |
| Down toward his journey’s ending in the west, | |
| The amaranthine palace of his rest. | 10 |
| Below, the river, like a sheet of glass, | |
| Reflects the glories of the clouds which pass | |
| In slow procession, waiting for the day | |
| To change her regal raiment for the gray— | |
| The gleaming river, winding slowly down | 15 |
| Beneath its shady banks from town to town, | |
| With here a wide stretch, like a lake, revealed | |
| By the low level of a fertile field, | |
| And here but hinted at, or half concealed | |
| Behind the clustering maples of a grove | 20 |
| Where all the day the mocking echoes rove. | |
| You look upon a range of intervales | |
| Where the abundant harvest never fails. | |
| You see the milkmaid drive the loitering line | |
| Of solemn-minded, melancholy kine. | 25 |
| Perhaps a solitary crow flaps by, | |
| With heavy wing and hoarse, defiant cry, | |
| And settles on the summit of the pine, | |
| Waiting in patience till the friendly shade | |
| Shall shield the purport of his nightly raid. | 30 |
| Then, as the sun sinks in a cloud of fire, | |
| The bell, which consecrates the chapel spire, | |
| Rising amid a perfect bower of trees, | |
| Sends forth its evening message on the breeze. | |
| And from the hills which girt the town around | 35 |
| Return the answers of its silver sound; | |
| And o’er the misty river and the meadows | |
| Creep slowly, slowly, the long, sombre shadows. | |
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