Morning in the Hills

How quiet is the morning in the hills!

The stealthy shadows of the summer clouds

Trail through the canyon, and the mountain stream

Sounds his sonorous music far below

In the deep-wooded wind-enchanted cove.

Hemlock and aspen, chestnut, beech, and fir

Go tiering down from storm-worn crest and ledge,

While in the hollows of the dark ravine

See the red road emerge, then disappear

Towards the wide plain and fertile valley lands.

My forest cabin half-way up the glen

Is solitary, save for one wise thrush,

The sound of falling water, and the wind

Mysteriously conversing with the leaves.

Here I abide unvisited by doubt,

Dreaming of far-off turmoil and despair,

The race of men and love and fleeting time,

What life may be, or beauty, caught and held

For a brief moment at eternal poise.

What impulse now shall quicken and make live

This outward semblance and this inward self?

One breath of being fills the bubble world,

Colored and frail, with fleeting change on change.

Surely some God contrived so fair a thing

In a vast leisure of uncounted days,

And touched it with the breath of living joy,

Wondrous and fair and wise! It must be so.