Classic Poem

A Summer in the Silence of the Hills

A summer in the silence of the hills!
Green waves of wilderness around us lay,
Billows of sparkling forest, where by day
Cloud-shadows moved and paused and loitered on,
Until the brooding twilight made all shadows one.

Cresting the hill our red-roofed Home uprose:
The leafy paths wound in and out the trees
That, nest-like, hid sweet cottage privacies;
Far down, the leaping streamlet lit the Glen,
And sang an " Auld lang syne" to ease the cares of men.

Nor these afar. Along the leagues we spake;
The trains like shuttles knit; into our hand
Daily dropt love and tears from every land;
And God! how clear across our hush the roar
At dawn, at noon, at eve, those guns on China's shore!

Our comrades there, Friends of the Quiet Way
And Simple Life, who greet with pronoun quaint
We world-folk save for prayer or holy saint;
Who listen to their soul on First-day morn
For the still voice of God, and hear the Word fresh-born.

Good grey-heads many; brows of seasoned calm;
Eyes that when young, in our sad history,
Had watched on dim subways of liberty
For dusky fugitives; and feet, not few,
Pickets of peace to-day in friendless causes new.

Dear mother-hearts, life-tried and sorrow-wise;
Quick, busy men, in weekly ebb and flow;
A charm of bright-faced girls in rosy blow,
At glancing games with merry-hearted boys;
With all the little children's blessed, bubbling noise.

And he who found the daffodils a-dance,
And gardened them forever in his song,
Was with us everywhere the summer long;
Lover of hermit rills and mountain moods,
And austere hearts of shepherds in green solitudes, —

The Poet of plain living and high thought:
As in the English lake beside his doors
He saw his hills, so in his verse lay ours.
Threefold our summer spell, threefold its grace,
A rounding harmony of Poet, People, Place.

A summer in the silence of the hills!
And now a haunted silence in the breast:
There will its shadows glide, its twilights rest,
The shining of the forest hold its gleam,
And unforgotten faces light some happy dream.English