The Hill People.

Their steps are light and exceedingly fleet:

They pass me by in the hurrying street.

I pause to look at a window's show —

From the white-flecked alp the hill winds blow —

And all at once it has passed me there,

Lilting back to the land of the air,

Back to the land of the great white stills:

Is it only the wind that comes down from the hills?

Was it Pikes Peak Pixie or Cheyenne Shee

That whispered a gay little rhyme to me?

Or a gnome that lives in the heart of a stone

And dances at dawn around Cameron's Cone?

Did the haunting laugh of the Maid of the Corn,

An Aztec memory trill on the morn?

Or soft did the Navajo Shell-Woman speak

As she passed with a hymn for the great white peak?

They touch me light with their finger tips

And lay little snatches of song on my lips,

And swift I am gone where the hill-streams flow,

Where the pit-lark soars and the gentians blow.

The tapers of blossoms flame under the tree

And the pilgrim road unfolds for me,

Lifting away where the hill-folk keep

The gardens and cloisters and shrines of the Steep.

In charmed ways my feet are set:

By what fair host is the palmer met

And borne away to the great white stills?

Is it only the wind that comes down from the hills?