Classic Poem

I know a patient, nobly-curving hill
That wears a different paleness every hour,—
Copper by sun, grey-velvet through a shower,—
Topaz and mauve,—blue of the heron's quill.
Forever mean-souled ploughmen scar the soil,
And bind, with rambling stony walls, her breast—
Never allow her weary womb to rest,
Nor give a moment's peace for all her toil.

O, if the ploughmen knew what wonders spring
From fields that for a season fallow lie—
Under the healing hand of wind and sky—
Would they not grant her time for flowering!
Her heart is rock. I wonder if her tongue
Knows how to say “I also once was young”?