Classic Poem

How blue the mountain is to-day!
It is not half so far away.
Distinct on it the shadows play:
Above it a long band of light,
Below it a long band of land,
Revealed in shocks of gathered corn,
In village spires, wax-candle white,
And fields like a wide-open hand,
Shining from a reversèd morn
Below those hills so blue to-day.

The clouds those hills, so blue to-day,
Seem to throw upward as they lay,
From that bright landscape's underplay,
Make all that blueness far away.
The clouds our lives project above
Follow so close our long career,
They paint it with distinctive strength,
They bring it nearer human love,
Tone it like echoes to the ear,
And accent through their graceful length
The heights that are so dark to-day.