Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, THE HILLS ARE HOME; 'OLD HOME WEEK,' 1899, by EDNA DEAN PROCTOR


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

THE HILLS ARE HOME; 'OLD HOME WEEK,' 1899, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: Forget new hampshire? By her cliffs, her meads, her brooks afoam
Last Line: Whatever skies above us rise, the hills, the hills are home!
Alternate Author Name(s): Dean
Subject(s): Geography; Homecoming; Nature; New Hampshire


FORGET New Hampshire? By her cliffs, her meads, her brooks afoam,
With love and pride where'er we bide, the Hills, the Hills are Home!
On Mississippi or by Nile, Ohio, Volga, Rhine,
We see our cloud-born Merrimack adown its valley shine;
And Contoocook —Singing Water —Monadnock's drifts have fed,
With lilt and rhyme and fall and chime flash o'er its pebbly bed;
And by Como's wave, yet fairer still, our Winnipesaukee spread.

Alp nor Sierra, nor the chains of India or Peru,
Can dwarf for us the white-robed heights our wondering childhood knew —
The awful Notch, and the great Stone-Face, and the Lake where the echoes fly,
And the sovereign dome of Washington throned in the eastern sky;—
For from Colorado's Snowy Range to the crest of the Pyrenees
New Hampshire's mountains grandest lift their peaks in the airy seas,
And the winds of half the world are theirs across the main and the leas.

Yet far beyond her hills and streams New Hampshire dear we hold;
A thousand tender memories our glowing hearts enfold;
For in dreams we see the early home by the elms or the maples tall,
The orchard-trees where the robins built, and the well by the garden wall;
The lilacs and the apple-blooms make paradise of May,
And up from the clover-meadows floats the breath of the new-mown hay;
And the Sabbath bells, as the light breeze swells, ring clear and die away.

And oh, the Lost Ones live again in love's immortal year!
We are children still by the hearth-fire's blaze while night steals cold and
drear;
Our mother's fond caress we win, our father's smile of pride,
And, 'Now I lay me down to sleep,' say, reverent, at their side.
Alas! alas! their graves are green, or white with a pall of snow,
But we see them yet by the evening hearth as in the long ago,
And the quiet churchyard where they rest is the holiest spot we know.

Forget New Hampshire? Let Kearsarge forget to greet the sun;
Connecticut forsake the sea; the Shoals their breakers shun;
But fervently, while life shall last, though wide our ways decline,
Back to the Mountain-Land our hearts will turn as to a shrine!
Forget New Hampshire? By her cliffs, her meads, her brooks afoam,
By all her hallowed memories —our lode-star while we roam —
Whatever skies above us rise, the Hills, the Hills are Home!





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