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| THE HILLS are all around me,—in a dell | |
| Worn by a stream, a deep and winding glen, | |
| On a bare rock, beside a waterfall, | |
| I sit; and, musing, lean upon my hand. | |
| The song of birds, and the low, piping wind, | 5 |
| The distant low of cattle, and the hum | |
| Of laboring men, as the breeze dies away, | |
| Make music with the stream’s deep under-song,— | |
| A mountain music, that revives old thoughts, | |
| And fills the eye of memory with tears. | 10 |
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| These shadowy steeps that lift on either hand | |
| Their brows into the sun, naked of trees, | |
| Yet wear a gorgeous mantle! the green grass, | |
| The golden gorse, the heath of purple bloom | |
| With its brown foliage, group amid the rocks | 15 |
| In tufts, or spreading banks; the lady-fern | |
| Spreads out her delicate fingers; ’neath the stone | |
| Dewed by the torrent’s spray, on marshy spots, | |
| The bright green flag shoots up: a thousand weeds | |
| Of curious form, and wild-flowers of all hues, | 20 |
| Hang pendent from the fissures of the cliffs. | |
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| Far ’neath my eye, even at the valley’s gorge, | |
| A ruined chapel with its ivied walls, | |
| Mid the rude gravestones of the villagers, | |
| Lies sheltered; thence gray orchards, and green fields | 25 |
| Spotted with cattle; and the furrowed glebe | |
| Where yet the tender wheaten shoot lies hid, | |
| Waiting the warm breath of the tardy spring | |
| (Life anchored nigh the haven of the dead), | |
| Bask in the day; beyond, the heathy moor | 30 |
| Spreads out its dusky level,—a wide plain, | |
| Prone as the ocean’s breast when the winds sleep, | |
| For the cloud shadows to disport upon. | |
| Lo! how along the depths of heaven, like ships | |
| With all their white sails crowding into light, | 35 |
| The vapors float magnificent!—beneath | |
| In beautiful contention with the light, | |
| Shadows are chasing shadows; like wild hounds, | |
| That sweep the dewy mountain’s side at morn. | |
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| And now thine eastern boundaries, dark plain! | 40 |
| Like youthful memories in life’s eve revived, | |
| Flash out to greet the sunset; the blue hills | |
| Rise with their bright crests in serener skies, | |
| And turrets start from groves between, and spires | |
| Mid clustering walls ascend; green hills swell out | 45 |
| Their bosoms, and the valleys sink in shade. | |
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| O, how I love to watch yon mountain heights! | |
| For there are eyes beyond, now fixed on them, | |
| Thinking of eyes that gaze upon them here; | |
| And there ’s a constant heart beyond, that beats | 50 |
| With a fond expectation, and doth count | |
| Days, hours, nay, minutes, as they creep away, | |
| Pensively chiding the slow-footed time. | |
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| With a long sigh from my sweet dream I start. | |
| Beneath me, from the hospitable cot | 55 |
| The blue smoke rises. In their rose-clasped porch | |
| Even now my kinsman and his gentle wife | |
| Wait me with welcome kind and friendly smiles. | |
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