Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE HILLS, by JOHN TROTWOOD MOORE


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE HILLS, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: I know not why I love the cloud-lined hills
Last Line: Holding its last sweet beam from earth to catch the first from heaven.
Subject(s): Death; Heaven; Dead, The; Paradise


I KNOW not why I love the cloud-lined hills,
Stretching away so faint in trembling rills
Of smoke-blue ether. Far away, they seem
Like fixèd billows of the ocean—like the dream
Of the sea, when in his mad and wild unrest
He longs to sleep upon his earth-bride's breast.
Transfixed, his waves—in blue and brown they stand,
The image of the ocean on the land.
The trees that tower in the twilight far
Are masts of bannered ships with naked spar,
While o'er the crest, like light-house lamp, shines out the evening star.

And yet a-near, I know not why to me
They seem to speak of friendship and the glee
Of youth time. Orchards, purpling 'mid October days,
And grapes that climb to kiss the sun's last rays.
Breezes that turn the sunflower's saffron sail
And billows the rip'ning grain where calls the quail.
Pools that gleam to stud the moss-grown front of rocks,
And cooling forest depths where rest the flocks.
The hills! The hills! Towering above the valley's sordid clod,
Lifting the earth's dead level half-way up to God,
Yet holding all in sweet communion with the mother sod.

Yon mountain, capped with its eternal snow,
Scorning all sweetness—e'en soft clouds below—
It hath no charm for me. There's no love there,
No voice of birds, nor fruit-perfumed air,
Nor low, soft song from bivouacked tents of hay—
The harvest reapers' song at close of day.
Alone it stands, symbol of dearth and might
Of naked power and grandeur's royal right
To look down on the tenderer things of earth
And scorn the sunshine love that gave them birth,
And blight, as with a shroud of frost, their unassuming mirth.

So may my life be—like the hills. Not high
My hopes and plans, but midway 'twixt the sky
And stagnant land. So may my friends be,
Not like mountains towering o'er the sea,
Wrapt in the cold splendor of a world apart—
With granite thoughts and barren boulder heart—
But high enough to tempt my gaze above
And low enough to catch the sunshine of my love.
So may my death be, like the hill, sun-riven—
Holding its last sweet beam from earth to catch the first from heaven.





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