AMONG THE HILLS

Far off, to eastward, I see the wide hill sloping

Up to the place where the pines and sky are one;

All the hill is gray with its young budding birches

And red with its maple-tips and yellow with the sun.

Sometimes, over it rolls a purple shadow

Of a ragged cloud that wanders in the large, open sky,

Born where the ploughed fields border on the river

And melting into space where the pines are black and high.

There all is quiet; but here where I am waiting,

Among the firs behind me the wind is ill at ease;

The crows, too, proclaim their old, incessant trouble,—

I think there is some battle raging in the surging trees.

And yet, should I go down beside the swollen river

Where the vagrant timber hurries to the wide untrammelled sea,

With the mind and the will to cross the new-born waters

And to let the yellow hillside share its peace with me,

— I know, then, that surely would come the old spring-fever

And touch my sluggish blood with its old eternal fire;

Till for me, too, the love of peace were over and forgotten,

And the freedom of the logs had become my soul's desire.