Blue hills beneath the haze
That broods o’er distant ways,
Whether ye may not hold
Secrets more dear than gold,—
This is the ever new
Puzzle within your blue.
Is ’t not a softer sun
Whose smiles yon hills have won?
Is ’t not a sweeter air
That folds the fields so fair?
Is ’t not a finer rest
That I so...
The Day unfolds like a lotus bloom,
Pink at the tip and gold at the core,
Rising up swiftly through waters of gloom
That lave night’s shore.
Down bamboo-stalks the sunbeams slide,
Darting like glittering elves at play,
To the thin arched grass where crickets hide
And sing all day.
The old crows caw from the...
The Windy forest, rousing from its sleep,
Voices its heart in hoarse Titanic roar;
The ocean bellows from its rocky shore;
The cataract, that haunts the rugged steep,
Makes mighty music in its headlong leap;
The clouds have voices, and the rivers pour
Their floods in thunder down to ocean’s floor;—
The hills alone mysterious silence keep...
When freedom from her home was driven,
’Mid vine-clad vales of Switzerland,
She sought the glorious Alps of heaven,
And there, ’mid cliffs by lightnings riven,
Gathered her hero-band.
And still outrings her freedom-song,
Amid the glaciers sparkling there,
At Sabbath bell, as peasants throng
Their mountain fastnesses along...
God ploughed one day with an earthquake,
And drove his furrows deep!
The huddling plains upstarted,
The hills were all a-leap!
But that is the mountains’ secret,
Age-hidden in their breast;
“God’s peace is everlasting,”
Are the dream-words of their rest.
He hath made them the haunt of beauty,
The home elect...
An altered look about the hills —
A Tyrian light the village fills —
A wider sunrise in the morn —
A deeper twilight on the lawn —
A print of a vermillion foot —
A purple finger on the slope —
A flippant fly upon the pane —
A spider at his trade again —
An added strut in...
My Faith is larger than the Hills —
So when the Hills decay —
My Faith must take the Purple Wheel
To show the Sun the way —
'Tis first He steps upon the Vane —
And then — upon the Hill —
And then abroad the World He go
To do His Golden Will —
And if His Yellow feet...
The Hills erect their Purple Heads
The Rivers lean to see
Yet Man has not of all the Throng
A Curiosity.
The Hills in Purple syllables
The Day's Adventures tell
To little Groups of Continents
Just going Home from School.
