Poetry Explorer- Classic Contemporary Poetry, OF MOUNTAINS, by LEONORA SPEYER


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Classic and Contemporary Poetry

OF MOUNTAINS, by                     Poet's Biography
First Line: All through the night I am aware
Last Line: His song!
Subject(s): Mountains; Hills; Downs (great Britain)


All through the night I am aware
Of hills that are not hills
Beyond my window;
I am aware of flight,
High, heavy,
Across the sky.

Mountains . . .
And over them a crumbling moon,
A snow-flake on fire,
Scattered from their frosty tips.

Stone wings,
So sure of the way!

Lying there I can see them
Blue hour on hour,
And from my safe pillow I follow
Their granite flight,
White hills fastened to my heels!

Morning lies prone upon the lake,
Like a pale woman on a silver bed
Who will not lift her head.

-- I had forgotten the green of trees at dawn, and how
withdrawn are they from day. I had forgotten too how
trees stray in their sleep across deep drowsy water, until
the first breeze ripples them away. --

Along the shore
Are little boats that dream
Of little journeys they will make;
Of journeys made no more.

-- Far up the slopes gleam languid patches of mid-summer
snow that never go; dim flocks of snow among the
rocks of a perched mountain meadow. --

Only the mountains are awake,
Guarding the vague low sky;
And a bird for its own song's sake;
And I!

-- Only a bird would dare to break the stillness of this
hour. Only a bird!

Mountains -- high mothers!
Storms lie in their laps,
Thunders and lightnings play about their iron knees;
I have seen them rock the sky to sleep
The mists lift them;
Flint and ice floating as clouds float,
Unpeopled islands of a white unfathomed sea.

-- They are like a vast crying turned to stone,
And beyond
Are stone echoes of the crying;
Beyond . . . and beyond . . .
Is a veiled whispering on its knees,
On its face,
Hushed finally on the far plains.

Out of blazing noon and into its cleft side
I creep,
To where the cataract,
Silver artery of the mountain,
Pounds through its bleak heart.

Abashed I stand in that covert place,
Silenced in the roar of the silent one.

Flowers and trees grow timid,
Follow me no further;
Grass runs to green safety on the lower hills.

Under my climbing feet earth climbs
And starves,
Its boulders start like bones from its gaunt sides;
Livid and alone,
It hurls itself forever upward,
Turned to blind stone
Beneath the glare of hostile spaces
And of skies estranged.

This is the Hill!
Mournful against the sky, and bare,
Where wind and darkness meet,
Crucified in the air.

And at its feet
The hills are gathered there,
Crowding and casting lots
For a green cloak to wear.

The way that I have come,
Winding so cannily,
Is a brown zig-zag serpent,
Alert along the tilting slopes.
Ready to leap and strike.

And looking down,
I fear its wily coils,
Knowing that I must tread them,
To reach again the cluttered toys
In the valley . . .
Where I shall sleep to-night.

They say the sea was here;
And it is like the sea to-day.

Waves, waves,
Green tides and tempests,
Closing in on me,
Granite waters that have crashed together,
Flooded and filled the deep places!

What are a million years?

These spread peaks
Are Eternity's stone fingers
On which she reckons the rhythm
Of centuries.

And they say the jungle crawled, lush and savage,
In this stark place.
Once I saw a glacier-rock
Lying numbered on a museum-shelf,
And as if carved upon it,
The drooping slender outline of a palmleaf
Fallen from a too hot sky.

Count on, stone fingers!
Fingers of ice, recount these careless wonders!

The sea was here.
Hidden beneath the ripples of on-coming hills,
Cattle are grazing on its grassy floor;
The sound of bells drifts by,
Like sea -- weed on the surface of the air.

What are a million years?

Looking up
I see strange beauty . . .
Of clouds and mountains
Mating.

I see white clouds
That pace the high blue aisles;
And I see lifting rock
That lifts still higher.
Night . . .
With her misty curtain . . .
And down the deepening hour,
Veils . . .
Falling . . . falling . . .

Looking up and up!

Dusk wanders here alone;
No cloud or star runs at her side,
The lit sky is her own.

Along her paths of snow,
In that far, fearless garden,
She walks alone;
And from the hills below
I watch her gather crimson flowers,
Roses in ice and stone.

All day the church-bells
Showering from the slim gold steeples:
Drops of cool sound
That seem to glisten in the sun.

Bells,
Sprinkling notes like holy water
On to the graves below,
On to the marble crosses about the churchyard.

And over them,
Lofty and alight,
The gold Christ on His meek towering Cross,
Crucified Shephard of the marble flock

Waiting
In patient rows about the church-yard.

But at evening
The mountains lean out of the sky
To drink the glossy waters of the lake.

So came Hannibal's elephants,
Humped gray backs,
Heads lowered,
Lumbering through the passes,
Knee-deep in the deep water.

Snow clings to their rough flanks,
Their shoulders heave under the red and purple blows
Of the sun-set;
Detached from earth and sky,
They emerge,
They tread mightily up the valley.
And I watch them,
Mild beasts wading into the lake,
And I wonder they do not shatter its bright mirror.

The boatman glanced along its darkening side,
From the pale water paler with the night,
And in his face I saw a sturdy pride,
An understanding of its strength and height,
Its silences, its storms, its lonely ways,
He who had lived beside it all his days.
He pulled upon his oar and naught he said;
But in his eyes were hills inherited.

Under the iron wheels that lift us,
And about the sooty scars that tunnels make,
The mountain scatters flowers from an ample garden . . .
Fox-glove and hare-bell pirouetting on the dizzy

And we of the summer valley
Stumble shivering along its constant snows,
On feet that never climbed.

Our voices are thin in the thin air,
Our little hearts thud strangely;
We are near the nearness of its swift deaths

On these relentless heights,
Death, in the swerving rock and blue, bitter ice,
Death, in the sly shrouds that hang from its gray banks,
Death unconcerned.

And we shall trickle down to life again
Unimportantly,
We of the summer valley.

And suddenly I fear them!
There is a howling in the air
That is the voice of mountains;
They leap the sky,
They tear at the clouds,
Foam drips from their steep jaws.

They sit hunched up along the passes,
Snarling in the gorges,
And one, his lean head strained toward the moon,
Howls, howls . . .

Night is overcast with their voices,
All the winds of the air
Are blown from their stretched throats.

The morning wears a Gothic air
And Sabbath bells are carved on its blue arches.

I am rimmed round with hills
Upon their knees.

So rose the first prayer to the first sky,
A wide doxology of early earth,
The while God rested.

Summer is leaving these high places;
With all their weight
The mountains cannot fasten to the meadow
One warm blade,
Hold to the bough its truest leaf,
Dismay or clamp upon the sky
Any small wing that chooses flight.

Not all the phalanx of these hills
Piled each on each,
Can do this thing,
Although they barricade the stars.
Summer is leaving these high places.

Traveler, if you would go,
Go now;
Follow the breathless gray-lipped stream,
The bony finger of the bough,
Follow the faded falling road,
Forget the whole green episode;
Go now.

Go now if you would go;
That is a different denser snow
Along the black cliffs of the sky,
And down the hills
Their harvest spills
Its slanting squares of wheat and rye;
But overhead something is stricken
In the air,
That will not quicken.

If you would not see hill-sides die,
Stripped bare and brown,
With stormy wreaths on the indomitable brow
That wears this hour like a crown,
Go now!

Hills that are not hills,
But a deliberate violent gesture
Of earth away from earth . . .
Upward, always upward . . .
What are seasons to you?
What are arrivals or departures?

But I,
How shall I go?
It is so long since I have seen the curved bar
Of the horizon
Making a prison of the world!

How shall I walk the plains again,
Go down and down
Into the valley of the shadow of life?

Only because of mountains in my heart
For me to climb,
Heights, my own,
Depths, higher still,
And I the pioneer!

Who is the pioneer?
He is the follower here,
Perhaps the last
Of all who passed.

He does not fear nor scorn
To tread
The ventured path, the worn,
Of those ahead;
Nor shall he fail
To blaze his own brave trail
Along the beaten track,
Make of the old a newer way
Of finer clay
For others at his back.

He is the pioneer who climbs,
Who dares to climb,
His own high heart,
Although he fall
A thousand times;
Who dares to crawl
On honest hands and knees
Along its stony ecstasies
Up to the utmost snows;
Nor knows
He stands on these . . .

Who is the pioneer?
He is the follower here,
Dogged and undeterred,
Perhaps the last
Of all who passed;
He passes too, the heavy bird,
Limping along . . .

Ah, but his song,
His song!





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