THE HILLS

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Dante

See, in the evening-glow,

How sharp the silver spear-heads charge
When Alp meets heaven in snow!

Browning

Thin, thin the pleasant human noises grow,
And faint the city gleams;

Rare the lone pastoral huts- marvel not thou!
The solemn peaks but to the stars are known,
But to the stars and the cold lunar beams;

Alone the sun arises, and alone

Spring the great streams.

Arnold

THE HILLS

U

THE SUMMONS

FROM Monadnoc

P! If thou knew'st who calls

To twilight parks of beech and pine,

High o'er the river intervals,

Above the ploughman's highest line,
Over the owner's farthest walls!
Up! where the the airy citadel

O'erlooks the surging landscape's swell!
Let not unto the stones the Day

Her lily and rose, her sea and land display.

Read the celestial sign!

Lo! the south answers to the north;
Bookworm, break this sloth urbane;
A greater spirit bids thee forth

Than the gray dreams which thee detain.
Mark how the climbing Oreads
Beckon thee to their arcades;
Youth, for a moment free as they,

Teach thy feet to feel the ground,
Ere yet arrives the wintry day
When Time thy feet has bound
Take the bounty of thy birth,
Taste the lordship of the earth.

YE

Ralph Waldo Emerson

PARTING

E storm-winds of Autumn!
Who rush by, who shake

The window, and ruffle
The gleam-lighted lake;

Who cross to the hillside
Thin-sprinkled with farms,

Where the high woods strip sadly
Their yellowing arms,—

Ye are bound for the mountains!
Ah! with you let me go

Where your cold, distant barrier,
The vast range of snow,

Through the loose clouds lifts dimly
Its white peaks in air,-
How deep is their stillness!

Ah! would I were there!

Hark! fast by the window
The rushing winds go,
To the ice-cumbered gorges,
The vast seas of snow!

There the torrents drive upward

Their rock-strangled hum;

There the avalanche thunders

The hoarse torrent dumb.

-I come, O ye mountains!
Ye torrents, I come!

Hark! the wind rushes past us!

Ah! with that let me go

To the clear, waning hill-side,

Unspotted by snow,

There to watch, o'er the sunk vale,

The frore mountain wall,

Where the niched snow-bed sprays down

Its powdery fall.

There its dusky blue clusters

The aconite spreads;

There the pines slope, the cloud-strips

Hung soft in their heads.

No life but, at moments,
The mountain bee's hum.
- I come, O ye mountains!
Ye pine-woods, I come!

Blow, ye winds! lift me with you!
I come to the wild.

Fold closely, O Nature!

Thine arms round thy child.

To thee only God granted

A heart ever new-
To all always open,
To all always true.

Ah! calm me, restore me;
And dry up my tears

On thy high mountain-platforms,
Where morn first appears;

Where the white mists, for ever,
Are spread and unfurl'd —
In the stir of the forces

Whence issued the world.

Matthew Arnold

MORGENLIED

AT Mürren let the morning lead thee out

To walk upon the cold and cloven hills, To hear the congregated mountains shout Their paean of a thousand foaming rills: Raimented with intolerable light,

The snow-peaks stand above thee, row on row

Arising, each a seraph in his might;

An organ each of varied stop doth blow.